Adjust Font Size: A A       Guest settings   Register

Hey Blue! Get some glasses!

Discussion in the Play Ball! forum
Hey Blue! Get some glasses!
I think I just experienced the worst umpire ever during my game on the weekend. I've disagreed in the past with some calls that were made on me, but this old guy takes the cake.

Bad Call #1:
Opposing team has runners on 1st and 2nd with one out. I'm playing 3rd and the batter hits a slow ground ball to me. I hear the runner coming down the line, so I hold my position right on the base path, field the ball and turn towards the runner to tag him. He starts to swerve out of the way from me, outside of the base path, so I follow. I gave a chase of about three steps and can't tag him so I give up and throw the ball to first to get the runner there. I'm 183 cm tall, so if I'm chasing the runner three steps outside of the base path, he's clearly outside the path, thus automatically out. Right? Wrong. The umpire doesn't even call it, and when I make an appeal, asking the umpire to come and take a look at the cleat marks left by the runner way outside of the basepath, he refuses and just orders us to play ball. I protested but the umpire looked like he was getting pissed and ordered the next batter in the box.

Bad Call #2
I'm at the plate, with 1 strike and 2 balls. The next pitch is low and away for ball 3. Wrong. The umpire calls 2 and 2. I make an appeal, but the ump won't listen to me. I stand outside the batters box staring at this guy, and it wasn't until the opposing teams catcher backed me up by stating it was ball 3.

Bad Call #3,4,5,6,7, etc.
I know you can't really argue the strike zone, but boy this guy seemed like he had a completely different strike zone for each batter, not to mention each team as well. Playing third base I can see when he's calling low and high balls for strikes, which he wasn't doing for our pitcher. When I was the runner at second base, I've got a pretty good view of the strike zone, and this ump was calling strikes below the knees of our batters, causing them to ground out just to protect the plate.

This game got so bad, more than half of our team was complaining about the ump, and in Japan, I've never seen that before in my 6 years playing kusa-yakyuu. Usually I'm the one grumbling about the wide strike zones, but our catcher demanded to be benched by the 3rd inning because he was afraid he'd turn around and punch the ump.

Has anybody else playing here ever had bd experiences with umpires? If I disagree with an umpire in a game, most of the time he'll come to me after the game and explain to me his reasoning, but this guy just went along his merry business as if nothing happened. Where's an angry emoticon when I need one.
Comments
Re: Hey Blue! Get some glasses!
[ Author: Guest: Maskedman | Posted: Dec 1, 2009 8:27 PM ]

[Old thread alert.]

I've been an umpire for 20 years and my advice to you: Grow up!
About

This is a site about Pro Yakyu (Japanese Baseball), not about who the next player to go over to MLB is. It's a community of Pro Yakyu fans who have come together to share their knowledge and opinions with the world. It's a place to follow teams and individuals playing baseball in Japan (and Asia), and to learn about Japanese (and Asian) culture through baseball.

It is my sincere hope that once you learn a bit about what we're about here that you will join the community of contributors.

Michael Westbay
(aka westbaystars)
Founder

Search for Pro Yakyu news and information
Copyright (c) 1995-2024 JapaneseBaseball.com.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Some rights reserved.