know, I know. I promised to talk about good plate umpires today. But by the way my mind works, a good plate umpire is one who doesn’t have many qualities of bad plate umpires. So let’s take a look at some of the "not so good" plate umpires I’ve seen over the past dozen years and talk about why you shouldn’t be like them.

Creative pitch-calling…. or, I have a date

A few seasons back I was working an MSBL doubleheader with a fairly inexperienced (maybe two years experience) partner. I had the plate in the first game, and the pitching was, well, awful. We had lots of walks resulting in a long game lasting over three hours.

Between games my newbie partner told me how bad my strike zone was and how he would show me how to get a game "in the books." Instead of responding, I merely laughed and went to find a between-games beverage.

The next game started with an interesting plate meeting, where the new plate umpire told the managers to bring them up swinging since the strike zone was waaaaaaay smaller in the first game than what they’d see in the second game.

I knew I was either in trouble or about to be entertained. I chose to be entertained.

Continued...