Little League Podcast Episode Final
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Patrick: [00:00:00] And in 15 years of umpiring, I can say I've never worked behind the infielders, and I'm also going to say it is absolutely terrible. Hey, hey, hey, I'm on vacation, every single day, cause I love my occupation. Hey, hey, hey, I'm on vacation, if you don't like your life, then you should go and change it. Hey everyone, welcome back to the Pregame and Umpire Classroom Podcast.
I'm your host Patrick Faerber, and today we're covering a level of baseball I've never worked before this week. And let me tell you, it was definitely a learning curve and adjustment, but by the end, I think I caught up. Of course, I'm talking about Little League Baseball. But before covering that, I want to start by saying thank you to all of you for the incredible response to our last episode.
The feedback has been phenomenal, with umpires from around the globe reaching out to share their thoughts on the mental aspects of of staying in love with [00:01:00] umpiring. Many of you shared stories about colleagues who fell out of the profession, a lot of them because they got too caught up in comparing themselves to others.
You know, one prominent signer in my area even told me that he thought it's the best content that I've produced so far, and he really believes it opens the door for real conversations about the mentality and ethical parts of officiating. And we both hope that this will help umpires to better understand and evaluate their own self development, something that we desperately need in our field.
Now, a funny follow up after the episode released. So, I published the episode, and like a day later, an umpire I don't often work with texted me, and without any prompting, he jokingly named one of the complaining umpires I'd mentioned in the stories. And this is exactly the kind of thing we need to be willing to call people out on.
You have to tell them when they are getting into this dangerous line of [00:02:00] thinking that revolves around comparison. Now, this doesn't mean you need to be a dick about it, but just casually responding when an umpire is stuck in the comparison mindset, you're doing them a significant disservice if you're not telling them the truth they need to hear.
And that truth is that they need to focus on their own self development or going to the right people to discuss their placement versus just complaining about it to other officials. And the example with the umpire the story was about, the umpire consistently seemed to come across as, let's say, overly critical, and seemed to think he was better than what I saw in the field.
Now, that doesn't mean his performance was bad by any means, but it definitely wasn't quite at the level of our top high school guys. And what's funny is that the guy who texted me works lots of games with this umpire, Patrick Faerber. and he was able to guess who it is without me naming any names. And I bring this up [00:03:00] because I hope it can help some of you to save your reputation.
Remember, if you have any questions or complaints about assigning a ranking, you need to go directly to the people making those decisions. Because when the umpire usually bemoans his ranking, he probably only gets people passively agreeing to move past the conversation. You know, guys saying, Yeah, I hear you man.
Yeah, you definitely should be ranked higher. We've all done that. We're all guilty of building up someone's ego because we don't want to argue with them. And what all of you need to know is that when this report gets back to us in a leadership position about where umpires think they should be, the report almost always comes back with people not saying, Yeah, he's really good, and he's getting screwed, and you need to look more at him.
But instead it comes back with, yeah, he complains a lot, and he thinks he's the best umpire ever. So, I strongly encourage all of you to think about that before the next time you talk with your partners. The story you are [00:04:00] trying to give, almost always will negatively impact your reputation. So, I strongly encourage you to think about this before your next time you talk with your partners, because the story you are trying to give, almost always will negatively impact your reputation.
Now, let's move on to the fun part, which is the Little League tournament I've been working for the last week. So, some background, I recently moved to a new city and reached out to one of the local parks to get involved with developing their umpires. The original plan was to connect with their current leadership in the fall, but they called me a few weeks ago, desperate for adult umpires for the state little league tournament they were hosting, so of course I said sure I'll help you out.
Now, this was my first time meeting the association and its leadership, it was also my first time working Little League Baseball and working from home. outside and behind the infielders. And in 15 years of umpiring, I can say I've never worked behind the infielders. [00:05:00] And I'm also going to say it is absolutely terrible.
Now, the logic behind the positioning is that standing behind allows you to see runners leaving early. But honestly, I didn't think it was much of an issue. Throughout the entire tournament, I don't think it was ever called. However, it absolutely puts you in a bad position for calls on the bases. You know, a great example would be with a runner on third base and a ground ball to the shortstop who's throwing to first, the base umpire is supposed to start behind the shortstop to see if R3 leaves early.
And the issue is, from this position, it's extremely hard to get across the working area to close your distance on the play at first. And you can imagine how far you are from traditional starting positions And getting across the infield dirt, past the shortstop, just becomes extremely difficult. And on top of this, it made almost everything going into 3rd or backpicks at 3rd extremely challenging.
And for a check swing, [00:06:00] forget it, it's pretty much impossible to tell from that far away as the mechanic positions you. And guess what, we never have complaints about runners leaving early, and our umpires still make those calls when needed. So, I just don't think it's a great mechanic, and I wouldn't invest too much time teaching it to your younger umpires, unless you're a Little League specific association.
Otherwise, having them work in the middle definitely helps out with angles, but also better develops these umpires for moving up into older age groups. Now, with this being my first Little League tournament, there were some interesting variations in gameplay. I'll see you The first one, no on deck batter.
Now this isn't a big deal, but you know our high school and college games do go a lot faster because we have on deck batters taking responsibility for retrieving foul balls and wild pitches that go behind the catcher. We lost a lot of time in this game from that awkward wait for someone to come out of the dugout, go get [00:07:00] the ball, go back, just waste a lot of time.
And then the other interesting variation was that when it comes to catcher's equipment, You know, for the first time ever, I saw a catcher wearing a dark visor slash sun shield attached to his helmet and covering his eyes. Now, as many of you know, this was recently outlawed in the NFHS for the same reason it's not allowed in NFHS football.
The visor makes it hard or impossible to see the player's eyes, which is critical in situations where a player may have a head or neck injury. You know, interestingly, my review of the Little League rules didn't show a similar rule. Now, I guess this is probably because they just haven't seen the NFHS change and haven't thought to add this rule.
But, given their focus on safety, I definitely hope and expect they'll add a similar restriction soon. So, these experiences highlighted the differences between various levels of baseball, which can sometimes be big differences or [00:08:00] tiny differences. And, it's important that we're always adaptable when we're umpiring, especially when we're swapping between leagues or levels.
It's crucial that we understand the reasoning behind the different mechanics and rules, and also that we're always keeping in mind the safety and integrity of the game. So, with all of that, I want to finish by sharing with you some of the feedback I gave to these umpires so that you can try and use it in your games.
First, attack the slot. One of the umpires I worked with probably took 5 or 6 balls to the mask over the course of one game. And he said it comes with the age group and being 6'3 but personally, I just don't think that's true. It looked to me like he was regularly standing directly behind the catcher, head over head.
and that his foot positioning didn't really even change from a right handed to a left handed batter. And another partner I worked with later in the tournament took a ball to the neck and it was a similar situation. [00:09:00] Now, I did an episode on this on YouTube already this year, but we have to attack the slot.
Both of these umpires would have avoided most of these issues with proper slot attacking. And note that slot positioning starts from us skipping back after every pitch, And then, resetting our feet for every next pitch. A lot of umpires that are working 3 or more games on a weekend, start to develop lazy footwork.
They stop doing the little things between pitches, and that leads to poor positioning. So, we need to be comfortable and mindful to step back after every pitch, relax a bit, and then step into the slot when the pitcher goes to get his signs from the catcher. Now, the second piece of feedback I gave was that we can speed up our youth baseball games a lot by using better ball management.
So, here's some of the things you need to know. 1. Always try to start with multiple baseballs. For me, I prefer [00:10:00] to start with 6, but at least 3. Now, it may have to be less based on the league rules. But, try to encourage the coaches to give you some game use balls to keep the count up. Two foul balls in a row should not delay a game because neither ball has gotten back yet.
When we have more baseballs, we have less delays. And, the second tip is that we can speed up the game by quickly going to our ball bag and getting a new ball in play. So, pretty much any time we have a foul ball, we should be getting a different ball from our ball bag and out to the pitcher. This allows the catcher or the on deck hitter to get the ball.
while the pitcher does his normal pre pitch routine. You can have the foul ball end up going back to the dugout or to one of the base coaches and then focus on getting it back between batters or innings, but this is a great way to speed up your games and it really does add up over the course of a whole game.
And staying with the subject of foul balls, the third topic I [00:11:00] covered with a lot of these umpires was remembering our foul ball responsibilities and when we need to call it. So, I'll go through this in a detailed breakdown in a different video, but note that you do not need to call out foul on every foul ball.
And as a reminder, the correct verbiage for a foul ball is to say foul, not foul ball. But back on the topic, if a foul ball is a close play or near a foul line, then yes, we can give it a verbal and a physical mechanic. But if it's more than 10 feet from the line, or as in one case, outside of the fence behind the dugout, then yes, we You don't need to call out FAL.
Everyone knows it is. There's no reason to call it. And on that note, we needed to cover who has fair FAL responsibilities in what situation. Anytime we're working in a crew of two, or a crew of three, or a crew of four, if there's a plate umpire and an umpire on that FAL line, then they have to split responsibility, and that responsibility is split usually at the front edge of the bag.[00:12:00]
And the mechanic I saw most commonly being messed up was Patrick Faerber. a ground ball that started in foul territory and went beyond the bag in foul territory. And remember, by rule, it does not become a foul ball until it either settles in foul territory or until it bounds beyond the front edge of the bag in foul territory.
And the mechanic is that once the ball reaches the front edge of the bag, at that point, it becomes the base umpire's call. Anything before that is the plate umpire's. But, if this ball doesn't become foul until it bounds beyond the bag, then the calling umpire will be the base umpire, because he has the ball as it's bounding beyond the bag.
And on one last note, timing has also been a big struggle that I saw for some of these umpires, and where I saw it at its worst has been on balls. One umpire was standing up pretty much at the same timing he would use to call a strike, and that was Patrick Faerber. And, it contributed to several street [00:13:00] ball calls that were not a good look.
So, we need to slow down our timing before we start to move and make a call. So, please take all this feedback and remember that these are small adjustments, but they can make a big difference in your performance and the overall flow of your game. So, keep working on these fundamentals, even as you gain more experience, and it's these details that will separate good umpires from great umpires.
So that's it for today's episode. If you have any feedback or stories you'd like to share, you can email them to me at patrick at umpireclassroom. com. Also, if you have any suggestions for helping umpires to keep Little League games moving, feel free to send those along my way. So, as always, thanks so much for listening, and I look forward to seeing you on the field.
