May 6, 2005
I promised Dave I would write a column far sooner than I actually did. But, before things get too hectic again, I thought I would write something -- let you know a little bit about myself and then try to share something that I've learned in the last few weeks.
I'm Rich Fronheiser, the other guy that's doing the assigning this season. In the past two weeks Dave and I have been working hard to make sure that every game is covered with two umpires. We've succeeded thus far -- if you check the schedule, every game in May now has 2 umpires assigned, including Mother's day.
Besides scheduling games, I've been very busy in the rest of my life. I'm a principal consultant for a software company and that means I travel quite a bit for my job.
Even with the travel I managed to work 24 baseball games in the month of April. 17 of those games were college games here in Wisconsin and the rest were high school games. No rainouts, which is amazing for April.
And I can't forget, I have a 3 month old daughter named Casey, who maybe will forgive her daddy for being absent so much the past month. Lots of pics at http://homepage.mac.com/fronheiser/casey.
OK, enough about me. Let's talk about the worst call I made this season and what I learned from it.
I was working a college DH at a WIAC school last weekend. Woke up sick as a dog -- let's just say I had to make a few stops between here and there. But there's no way they are going to be able to find an umpire on such short notice, so I sucked it up and worked the games.
By the eighth inning of the second game, I was feeling pretty drained. No food in me, plus I was clearly dehydrated, no matter how much water and Gatorade I could drink.
No excuses, but I wanted to properly set up my frame of mind before I described the play.
Runners on first and second (R1 and R2), 2 outs. Base hit to the outfield. Play at the plate. I didn't prepare properly for the play and it exploded on me. I called the runner out and I knew I blew it before I even finished making the call. Coach was the picture of class -- he wouldn't let his players complain and neither did he.
Why did I miss the call? My mental focus wasn't there, so I neglected the fundamentals. Play at the plate, get a good depth behind the plate, work from the point of the plate, and let the throw take you towards the play to get a view of everything.
The past week, Dave and I got a few emails from coaches in the league in response to our request for feedback from the teams. It's easy to think about coaches as not really knowing much about umpiring, but I must say that the emails we got showed a good understanding of what makes a good umpire. And what was mentioned came down to fundamentals.
One manager mentioned that a plate umpire was calling pitches almost before they hit the glove. While calling strike-err-foul looks bad enough, not having good timing can cause an umpire to commit gross misses -- those types of misses that cause everyone to groan. Pitchers in the upper levels rely on keeping pitches down near the knee. When an umpire calls pitches too quickly, pitches that are VERY low can be called strikes. Ensure you are watching the ball all the way into the glove, process the information, and ONLY THEN call the pitch.
Another manager emailed with a rule he thought was misapplied on the field -- a runner was hit with a batted ball, but runners were allowed to advance on the play. The manager was correct in his interpretation of the play. When a runner is called out for being struck with a batted ball, no runners can advance and the batter is awarded first base. Again, solid rule knowledge is fundamental to doing your job as an umpire. Read some of the rulebook on a regular basis.
Most of the comments we got were very positive -- lots of hustle, lots of enthusiasm, and plenty of good umpiring. Now that the toughest day in May is covered, we're going to hope for good weather and try to enjoy some of the umpiring ourselves.
--Rich