1st Class

Today was cold. Well, technically it was high 40's and low 50's, which isn't that bad for this time of winter. But since I'm in Florida, I expect more. At the minimum, I didn't expect the insane wind chill while standing on the fields. But then again, I guess I shouldn't complain since it was low 20's in NY today.

Anyhow, started the first day of class today. Morning was mostly going over some of the general umpire concepts and basic parts of the rulebooks. The bulk of the work today was in the afternoon, where we practiced how to put on, take off, and hold our masks, as well as an umpire's "bread and butter" mechanics (aka signals in this case), those for balls, strikes, safe, and out. While one might think that this is easy and simple to do the, the reality is that it requires a lot of work to get them perfect. It takes tons and tons of practice just to get the motions and signals right, ie. to make sure that your arms are fully stretched EXACTLY parallel to the ground to signal safe, that you wait EXACTLY enough time after the pitch before you make your call, and that you voice echoing the call of the pitch is EXACTLY loud enough, etc. (Notice the perfection theme with these recent posts?) With a dozen or so sharp eyed instructors helping us along, the entire afternoon was spent on the before said chilly field, practicing these mechanics, along with the proper timing associated with them. Since none of us got all these things exactly right, take a wild guess at what our homework was? And no, it wasn't weird that we were yelling "BALL ONE," "STRIKE ONE," "SAFE," and or "HE'S OUT" at the top of our lungs in our hotel rooms. It is only weird if the majority of the people in the hotel weren't doing the same thing.

The other interesting point of the day was that all of us at school were sore by the end of the day's class, simply from practicing the mechanics and being on our feet all afternoon. I admit that I'm not in the best shape of my life, but I thought I was in relatively good shape and I would be okay. Well, my feet and quads disagree. Being that today was only day one, I can only imagine the what the rest of school holds for my legs. And you thought umpires didn't have to be in shape? Well, you probably still do. But in that case, you can google the younger major league umpires, ie. Jim Wolf and any minor league umpire and I believe you'll see the contrary.

I will leave you with a funny quote we got from our lead instructor today:
"We won't teach the 1 umpire system - it's terrible for checkswings."
(Those of you with knowledge of baseball or softball should get the joke; it might take a second though.)