If you’ve not umpired a really, really lopsided game, you might not be aware of how tempting it is to lose your edge while one team struggles to get off the field as the pitcher is unable to even remotely approach a fairly-large strike zone.
Today, I learned that lesson for myself.
I had two schools from the same city: one in blue, one in green. I don’t know why I would assume such a thing, but I did go into the game believing that since I had similarly-sized schools from roughly the same socio-economic area that the game would be competitive.
A ten-run top of the first sorta killed that thought quickly.
Well, it wasn’t all that quick actually, as you might imagine.
It was 17-2 by the middle of the second. I think the final was 22-2, so the scoring tapered off, obviously.
Of course, if you just consider we played only four innings and still went about 145 minutes.
Yikes!
The blue team used five pitchers. They all seemed to be, at best, part-timers at the position. To their credit, they were all fairly good-natured throughout their struggles.
Well, the fourth guy wasn’t too excited when I called him for a balk, but I think it was more confusion over what he did than it was that he was sure he hadn’t committed the illegal act.
With a runner on first base, the pitcher held the ball in front of his thigh, hiding the ball from the runner’s sight.
To my understanding, that’s a balk.
“Time!”
“What did I do?”
I wanted to avoid too much of a conversation, so I gave a brief demonstration, “The ball needs to be either here or here, but it cannot be HERE!”
I felt a little bad because the kid clearly hasn’t pitched too often and wasn’t trying to do anything untoward, but I felt it was as clear a case as I was likely to see, so I chalked up my first career balk today.
The coach wanted clarification as well. He seemed to be as mystified as the pitcher.
Hence, here was my first real ‘confrontation’ with a coach, which turned into another teaching situation as he seemed less like he wanted to challenge my decision and more like he wasn’t really sure on the rule. Nonetheless, I was a little short (but polite) with him. I immediately wished I’d taken a softer tone, but I guess I was pretty happy with the fact that I’d identified a balk and made the call-It’s not an easy call to make, to be honest-and I wasn’t going to let anyone even begin to think there was any reason to question it.
I also somehow had never had the opportunity to call an infield fly. The situation is certainly common enough, but it just seems to never happen.
Today it did and I loved calling it.
“Infield fly! The batter is out!”
It felt GOOD!
I did have a little hiccup today as well.
With runners at first and second and less than two out, the batter struck out swinging at a pitch the catcher dropped. Despite knowing the batter-runner was out due to first base being occupied, I somehow let the fact that my partner did not vocally call the batter-runner out throw me and was left dumb-founded when the runner at first got off the base a bit and a play was made at first.
Fortunately, he was safe on the throw and tag…not that I made any call whatsoever. Instead, while everyone stared at me, I called for time and went to consult with my partner.
“The batter-runner is out due to first base being occupied and the runner from first base was safe on the play, right?”
Well, we both had it the same way, at least.
Still, I KNEW I looked like a big-time rookie right there.
Bummer.
All in all, it was a good night, if only because I experienced all these firsts.
Well, that and the weather…
