Injured umpire
 

OK, unfortunately this one happened to me yesterday.

My knee had been bothering me all day yesterday, but I still went to do my MS game as scheduled. During warm up time I do a couple of exits from behind the plate just to get a feel for the ground around the plate (these are MS fields, not exactly high quality).

As I come out from behind the plate, I feel a pop in my knee. For the next three innings I can't put more than about 50% of my normal weight on my left leg because of the knee pain.

What do you do if you are the umpire in a same like this, where you are the single umpire for the game?

I simply let the coaches know prior to starting the game that I did something to my knee and I would do the best I can to get out to make calls, but I might be making most of the calls from behind the plate. (They both agreed this would be ok).

That's about the best you can do in that situation. Better to have an umpire behind the plate than no umpire at all. I hope you recover quickly. Good luck.

First action should be to contact your assignor, if there is one, and let him/her know. Let the person responsible to the school decide if there is any option. While unlikely, there just might be someone nearby that would be available to fill the spot on short notice without you risking further injury, and being more mobile for the teams' benefit.

After that is what you did.

The AD is the assigner for that game, and he was too busy dealing with a no-show umpire situation for his baseball game at the time. There was nobody else in the area available that he uses as I have done all 4 home games at the school each of the last several years.

Been there a couple of times. It sucks. I think you did all you could. Communication with coaches in advance is key.

Hardest call is the steal of second.

This is one of the major problems when there is no centralized scheduling - ADs will have their own priorities, where a central assignor/scheduler will hopefully have more time and better resources to do things like you needed.

I am assuming that this is a rural area, and those resources are not available, so yeah...probably did the right thing.

Hope your knee gets better!

Actually it isn't a rural area. MS SB and MS Baseball are about as low on the priority level as it can get though. They have almost been cut multiple times due to budget constraints in the last few years.

It's more that they pay the MS AD's a little extra for the work and there is no central oversight to speak of for the 5 or 6 (depending on the sport), MS league.

Thankfully the knee isn't to serious. It is actually a muscle issue and not a structural knee issue, so I was told to rest (ha ha) and take anti-inflammatory medications before I umpire (the Dr knows how much I work).

Thankfully at this level the steal of second usually doesn't draw a throw because it is on a passed ball or wild pitch.