On all three I had the plate (long story why). Saturday\u2019s Pony game went well. No arguments, no problems, only a few groans. That evening, however, I had The thing is, that strike call would have been just fine in my Pony game earlier that day. It was about a ball under the letters, definitely the top of the zone at any level 12-and-over, but acceptable. Except when you get to 17-, 18-year-olds. That\u2019s where the top of the zone goes down to about a ball above the belt (maybe half a ball), although get two umpires together and it\u2019s hard to get agreement on this.<\/p>\n So I called a high strike on the first batter, heard plenty about it, recognized my error (and it was<\/em> my error), and of course I adjusted. Because that’s what we do. We adjust.<\/p>\n Next morning I\u2019m on the plate again, this time for the senior division of an adult baseball league. In this case, \u201csenior\u201d means the old guys \u2013 as I say, like me. These games are fun to work because the old guys are out there having fun, making fun of one another, not taking anything but their own mortality very seriously. They\u2019re striving to win, but not that hard. They don\u2019t run fast, they commit a lot of errors, and the pitching is \u2026 well, lets call it spotty. For the most part, the pitches are floaters, coming in like a 12-6 curve ball, but they aren\u2019t actual breaking balls. They\u2019re just slow tosses that gravity brings over the plate like falling Judging these pitches is more difficult than calling the vastly more competent college pitchers. Sounds counter-intuitive, I know, but it\u2019s true. The trajectory But probably the biggest difference between the play of college kids and that of mere mortals is the speed of the game. Not only do pitchers often have tremendous velocity, but runners are extremely fast (really fast), and defensively the ball moves around the infield like a rocket. Stay focused, Blue, or you\u2019ll lose the ball. And if you lose the ball, you\u2019re screwed. (Been there, done that.)<\/p>\n The challenging part is the first phase \u2013 the foot-race to get inside and pivot before the batter-runner gets to the bag. When the ball is hit you go suddenly into motion. It\u2019s a long run, and a fast one, because you\u2019re effectively racing the batter-runner (a nineteen-year-old college athlete) to get position at first base. And if the hit turns into a triple, get ready to really run.<\/p>\n We do this all the time, don\u2019t we \u2026 adjust to what the game brings us. Every game. All of it. The whole wide frickin\u2019 world of it. Adjust, adjust, adjust. Adapt or die.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Here\u2019s a sequence of games that I worked recently. Most of you will recognize the dilemma: Saturday afternoon: 14U Pony game Saturday evening: College summer league game Sunday morning: Adult men\u2019s league game \u2013 older division (old farts, like me) On all three I had the plate (long story why). Saturday\u2019s Pony game went well. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-craft","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8epXH-1","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.umpirebible.com\/ubBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.umpirebible.com\/ubBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.umpirebible.com\/ubBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.umpirebible.com\/ubBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.umpirebible.com\/ubBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.umpirebible.com\/ubBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69,"href":"http:\/\/www.umpirebible.com\/ubBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions\/69"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.umpirebible.com\/ubBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.umpirebible.com\/ubBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.umpirebible.com\/ubBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.umpirebible.com\/ubBlog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/player_kid03.jpg?resize=300%2C160\")
the plate on a college summer league game. On the very first batter I called a high strike. Not very high, but high for this level. And I sure did hear about it. That\u2019s the thing about calling college ball \u2013 the guys know their shit. High strike\u00a0and everyone (but\u00a0everyone<\/em>) sees it. And \u201ccomments.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.umpirebible.com\/ubBlog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/player_college03.jpg?resize=280%2C160\")
But this kind of adjustment is not always that easy. Let\u2019s stay with pitching for a moment. Saturday evening I had awesome pitching from the college players. Great control, tremendous velocity, wicked movement on the breaking balls. Two of my pitchers that night were hitting upper 80s, low 90s. They popped the catcher\u2019s glove like gunshots. But once I had them dialed in, calling the game was (relatively) easy.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.umpirebible.com\/ubBlog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/player_old.jpg?resize=272%2C185\")
water.<\/p>\n
\nof a well-thrown pitch makes tracking the pitch from release point to catcher\u2019s mitt much easier than that of a floater that cuts into the strike zone from \u2026 well, from altitude. And making that overnight adjustment from bullets to puff-balls is difficult.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.umpirebible.com\/ubBlog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/player_old02.jpg?resize=256%2C197\")
The speed of the base runners can really test you. This is most noticeable when, with no runners on base, you\u2019re in the \u201cA\u201d position (on the foul line but back of the first baseman). If the first baseman is playing deep, you\u2019re a long way from the bag. And then, on a ball hit to the outfield, you need to break to the infield, pivot to see the base touch, and then stay with the runner if he goes for second. (Take a look at the rotation here.)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.umpirebible.com\/ubBlog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/ump2.png?resize=100%2C90\")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"