Return To The Planet of the Umps

I've been umpiring a lot of softball lately.  My coaching only covers two days a week, and baseball is in intermission at this point.  If you're hooked on the diamond, watching goes so far: may as well watch and have some say.

I first umpired a couple of years ago.  I enjoyed it, but worked all Minor Softball games.  Since we were only intrapark, it was pretty much a snoozefest.  Lots of walks and girls learning NOT to swing the bat to be successful.  Including seven and eight year-old players in minor ball instead of a machine pitch environment also taught them to depend on the older players while they spent a lot of time playing in the outfield.  By the time they are nine, they are bored with the game and decide X-box would be better.

As coaches, we tried to keep play equal, but the kids like to win, too.  The younger kids weren't learning where to make the plays, so it was not automatic by the time they got into minors.  I always believed this was the case.

Umpiring opened my eyes to how right I was. The biggest difference in play was with...catchers.  We have ladies at our league who can catch the ball and sometimes stop it.  Every visiting team using the machine pitch system had a catcher who not only stopped the ball, but knew how to call out the play, talk to their team.  One extreme case called time, and said, "I have to tell the pitcher a joke."  It is a very underrated item in the catcher's arsenal and I've actually seen it turn a game around.  She didn't learn that standing in the outfield.

One argument for playing seven and eight year-old players in minor ball is to develop pitching.  Except in very rare circumstances, pitching is not learned in a Little League season: it is too short to effectively teach from scratch.  Personal time spent practicing will develop pitchers: release balls, catch in the backyard, and lessons from true pitching teachers are needed.  While the motion is basically natural, the muscle memory is earned from repetition.

Girls, put in the time and effort to get good at every phase of the game.  I'll try to call them well.