irst, I am proud to say that in this series, the umpires did a tremendous job. Unlike our MLB brothers, we had no real controversy. No "scooped" strike three, no missed tags, no home runs on balls that are in the park. No, we got lucky and nailed them all. But, and this is a big BUT ... there were many times when we didn't manage the game well. While we didn't boot any calls, we certainly can learn from how we mishandled some tight spots.

Balls, strikes, safes, outs

If you have been around this site for awhile, you will have heard this many times: The easy part of officiating is making the calls. Regardless of what we saw in the MLB playoffs, for 99% of our games, the actual calls are pieces of cake. What is always much harder is game management. That becomes even more important in the play-offs, where teams will be seeing each other night after night and where emotions will carry over.

Continued...