Check Swing

[Mark Hemphill]

it is important to remember on a check swing appeal, the home plate ump has already thought it was no swing.

When you have umpires like Brian Crochet, who was the plate umpire for the Sunday LSU game and for the Ole Miss game on Monday, he is clueless as to what is a strike or ball much less whether a batter swung at a pitch or not. I'm still trying to figure out how he got plate duty for consecutive games. One of the worst umpires in softball.

[ragin50]

When you have umpires like Brian Crochet, who was the plate umpire for the Sunday LSU game and for the Ole Miss game on Monday, he is clueless as to what is a strike or ball much less whether a batter swung at a pitch or not. I'm still trying to figure out how he got plate duty for consecutive games. One of the worst umpires in softball.

Makes you wonder how they even keep umps like that around, much less behind the plate. He couldn't even keep track of the count at times.

[Turbine]

From a strictly line of sight reading from the umpires vantage point a right handed batter gets a 22.5 degree swing before the bat swing breaks the visual line of sight plane from the 3rd base umpires angle.

That same batter from a strictly line of sight reading from the umpires vantage point gets a 45 degree swing before the bat swing breaks the visual line of sight plane from the 1st base umpires angle.

The opposite is true for a left handed batter.

It just begs for different interpretations.

To be accurate, baseball and softball both would be well served with a reading from the 90 degree angle to the pitcher/catcher.

A first base umpire can't help but be more lenient to a right handed batter than a 3rd base umpire.

[IndiaPaleAle]

Makes you wonder how they even keep umps like that around, much less behind the plate. He couldn't even keep track of the count at times.

I won't comment about an individual umpire's ability, but I can answer the question about why umps are "kept around." The simple reason is: we don't have enough officials across all sports and all levels of sport to allow for officials to move to different game sites or to even have evenings off. Even worse: younger people are not picking up the avocation of officiating. It's been a major problem on the high school level for years now, but we're beginning to see it on the college level, too.

Case in point: The high school softball umpire group in New Orleans has around 80 officials registered to cover approximately 50 schools. Less than a quarter of those officials are under the age of 50. Those stats aren't much better in Lafayette and in other locations in the state.

If you think you can do better, sign up to officiate yourself. We'll gladly take you. If you know someone who is young, has played sports, and wants to stay involved with their sport(s) of choice, refer them to the LHSAA or have them contact me directly. I'll put them in touch with the right people.

[R1Letterman]

Very True!

Also in most places you can just ask any coach where they get their officials, and that coach would likely have the assignment secretary’s contact info and one could find our about how to start with that association easily from there.

NOLA was always short, i remember playing rec baseball and little league baseball with just one ump standing behind mound, ive been many places since then, and have never seen UMPs do that anywhere else