Umping a Practice Game

I called a practice game for a pair of teams that are playing in a 10U league this fall tonight.  The trick was, they are playing open bases and dropped third strike is live.  Leading off, pitching from the stretch, picking off, balks, the whole nine yards.  That’s a lot to throw at 10U, especially one of these teams which is heavily 9U and coming from machine pitch.

But you know what?  I think it’s going to work.  The kids were excited to try it.  They seemed to want the challenge of playing “real baseball”.  It was fun to call their game.

Being a practice game, we called a time out any time we wanted to so as to instruct players or go coach them on the field.  It was a good night.  I had fun, and enjoyed it even more than I thought I would.

I came away from it thinking our youth baseball is in some good hands going forward, and I wish both of these teams the best of luck this fall.

Umpiring Interpretations

We got a reminder how much impact umpiring interpretations can have on a ball game tonight in Idalou.  The Idalou pitcher, who was plenty good anyway, was getting strikes called extremely wide.  Wide like the catcher was diving out to his right to catch the ball.  Consistently this was called a strike for Idalou.  Their pitcher was getting through innings three up, three down on 12 or 13 pitches.

When asked why he was calling these pitches strikes, his statement was that our batters were “bailing backwards” and he’d been told by his distrct to call practically anything a strike when the batter did this.

Now I think the thing the district probably intended for him to do was call strikes on a batter that completely bails out of the box, afraid to make any attempt to put the ball in play.  You’ve seen the mythical kid we’re talking about here - the one that runs out of the box the moment the pitch leaves the pitcher’s hand.  This umpire’s interpretation, however, was that our batter’s actions were falling into this category even if they just straightened up and dropped a lead foot back - like many of our batters tend to do when they see the incoming pitch is no good and they have no intention of hitting it.

There is nothing in the rule book that supports this, and I don’t think there is justification for it in what you see some umpires do to help a kid who really is backing completely out of the box and encouraging them to stay in and try to hit the ball.  That interpretation is more a “gentleman’s agreement” that this is in the best interest of helping the kid get the confidence to stand in an swing - but there’s no rule like that in the book.  Our batters were not bailing out of the box.  There is a rule that says if a batter refuses to enter the batters box, the umpire is to instruct the pitcher to pitch the ball and every single pitch is a strike until the batter gets in the box.

In one of these two cases you have a child that is afraid, and many (not all) umpires will call a strike on every pitch as a way to help encourage the child to stand in there and try.  In the other case, you have an offense intentionally trying to delay the game (make time run out, run the game past 10pm, etc) - that’s an unsportsmanlike act that justifies the actions recommended in the rule book.

What our batters were doing was neither, and getting those extremely wide pitches all called strikes threw the competitive balance of the game completely out of whack.  It was an injustice.  The game was over 10-0 in just a little over an hour.

I don’t think the young man behind the plate was trying to pull a fast one or anything, just that he is so inexperienced that he grossly misinterpreted the situation here.  One of the first “unwritten rules” of umpiring is you don’t want your umpiring to favor one team over another and decide the game - let the kids decide it on the field.  The umpire tonight broke that unwritten rule.