Today marks the exact half-way point of umpiring school. We have completed all lessons involving 2 man umpire mechanics as well as the vast majority of the rule book. And a mere week after being confused to the extreme, I must say that I am at a much different place. This is not to say I've gotten everything perfect. In fact, I am still making tons mistakes and there are many things I can do better. But versus last week, everything seems a little slower now and I can better handle a good portion of the control situations and games that we're doing in class. Also, I am more confident about the umpiring mechanics and such, to a point that I feel just a teeny bit confident about being out there on the field and actually knowing what to do in different situations.
The remaining two and a half weeks of school should be interesting. Live games and evaluations (with the help of local high school and college teams) will begin. At the same time, each day on the field, we're running through stations such as cages to work on our plate work (tracking, stance, timing, etc), drill fields to reinforce our mechanics, and control games to practice specific situations. The pace of everything is much faster now, and there's more critiquing, less instructing from the staff. In addition, we will have a constant stream of guests and visitors coming in to school to observe, including various umpires, supervisors, assigners, media crews such as mlb.com, and such. Ultimately, this is where school gets a little more serious, but fun at the same time. Also, it should also finally give me the opportunity to grab some pictures of school and class. I'll try and post some them so you won't have to rely on my boring crappy writing and descriptions.
Don't put down your writing! I feel like I'm right there with you, because of these words.
ReplyDeleteGood luck with the second half. Remember, there is no such thing as a do-over in a baseball game. Besides foul balls, of course.