ecently the boards have been full of discussion of the Gerry Davis system.  Both McGriff's and our forum have had a dozen or more threads regarding Gerry Davis. The newcomer to umpiring might think that Gerry Davis was the best thing to come along since sliced bread. I, on the other hand, enjoyed the entertainment and the name calling — but that's another story.

How to evaluate yourself?

Before undertaking a change in your plate work, you need to go through some personal evaluation.  In this article, I will lay out the questions you must ask yourself before making any changes to your game.

First, you need to know how many pitches a game that you are missing. If you are the bionic umpire and rarely miss a pitch, why would you want to change? Can you improve upon perfection?  Hopefully, you have a more honest assessment of yourself and have an idea of what your shortcomings are. Unfortunately, most umpires never quantify their shortcomings; instead, they go with anecdotes, feel, and other subjective evaluations. Thus they flit from mechanic to mechanic and never get good at anything.

So you have to find out how many pitches you are missing in the
"average" game. Have someone you trust sit in the stands and count your misses. Don't trust yourself to be able to do that. After all, if you know you missed the pitch, why did you call it that way? (That assumes the miss wasn't an 0FYC!)

Continued...