NSA Umpires - Broken System
Posted by SFrogue
on 8/12/2013, 6:01 pm
First off, I'm not just some dick as I'm sure I was thought of this weekend when I approached all umpires involved with simple information, I umpire a lot of baseball including 4 USSSA National Championships and Elite 32 tournaments and have attended many camps with College/Major League Umpires. I have never seen the lack of simple umpiring fundamentals that I witnessed Saturday in Potterville. Twice there was a tag play at home and both times the umpire was out of position. On the second not only was the umpire out of position, he called the runner out then at the urging of the opposing team gathered the other three base umpires, who somehow had a better view than he, and reversed his call! I could care less about whether he called him out/safe but for the love of God you cannot change your call like that. You could say I'm just grieving, as both calls went against my team, but I am not. I want all teams to benefit from this. I am not aware of any training for NSA umpires regarding simple positioning, which is what I consider a broken system that leads to faulty calls. Especially now that they are adding 2 (MLB style with 4 umpires) to the mix for bigger games and not providing any training. I firmly believe that a simple pre-tournament clinic would vastly improve the NSA umpires ability to be in better position to make correct calls, whatever they may be. I would personally help and offer my time for free to better this system and make this game that we all love more enjoyable and hopefully take some of the grief that umpires get away.
|