Good point, good point...although I have to admit I've enjoyed all the Angel Hernandez jokes and memes that have been flying around the internet.
I once kept the clock for a middle school basketball game, and it was the most stressful evening of my life, lol. My heart rate still elevates at the memory of the crowd screaming "CLOCK" at me.
Maybe I just haven't had a very stressful life, or maybe umps and refs should be sainted.
And umpires get more attention because of the perception that they have a huge impact on the game because they make a call on almost every play, but they just don’t have that big of an impact. Football officials have a far bigger impact specifically because they don’t make calls on every play but when they do, it’s often after the fact, taking points off the board.
Spot on, Noah. I can’t believe how home plate umps manage to make the correct calls so often, with such a high %. In fact, I don’t know how they manage to see the ball so well, with the velocity and movement of pitchers today.
Then there is the psychological pressure when everyone is depending on you to get the calls — at the bases too! — right, to just blend into the background because you are doing your job well.
I umpired my way through grad school, we really needed the extra money. But just slow pitch softball. A quite different game. No balls-strikes controversies (well, did the arching, then falling ball clip the edge of the mat or not? 😭) Two nights a week with three games each night, then played ball a third night. Softball life! The guys took everything so seriously, so much griping snd yelling - at me! Just for calls on the bases (ok, with only one umpire per game, I had to be everywhere at once, so…). I did not like it at all. Did not like tossing guys out of games for excessive griping (the rules were you were not actually permitted to gripe more than a whine or two, certainly no badgering, but that didn’t stop them). And really, I was good at it, the calls. But the grief of a bad call or missing something would stay with me for days, along with the furious complaints that followed.
I think the emotional part of umpiring in professional baseball is extremely tough. So I am also amazed how well professional umps do that work… professionally.
(And then too, the road to becoming an mlb ump is extraordinarily difficult, and umpiring your way up the ladder through the minor leagues has to be as hard than playing your way up the ladder. Bless them all.)
You make a great point. How do these umps deal with the difficulties of the job AND being hated by fans and players alike? Given that environment, it's natural that every now and then we'd end up with one like Angel, who often brandished his authority just for the hell of it.
BTW, I think you've have just talked me out of my retirement plan.
People are rejoicing at him being gone, but the same anger and energy that is directed towards him will just be redirected to someone else.
On another note, I just received my Amazon despatch notice to say that your book is on the way to me here in Scotland. Hoping it arrives before I fly out to NYC next week so I can read it on the plane! 😊
Absolutely! My wife got us tickets to the Yankees-Dodgers series, all three games. It’s a 40th birthday gift to me. I can’t wait. It’s been a rough year and I’m currently recovering from skin cancer surgery, but the thought of this trip is getting me through! Trying to distract myself with baseball and watching as many sports movies as possible at the moment 😊
Sports fans always want a scapegoat when things don't go exactly as they want them to go. Baseball umpires, along with their professional cousins, the referees of pro football, basketball and hockey, are fairly obvious ones. Viewing at home sober I can respect their abilities, but it's hard to appreciate the work of officials when your mental processing abilities are impaired by alcohol, as is the case with some (but not all) of the fans.
The funniest ump insult I've ever heard was in the comedy duo Wayne & Shuster's portrayal of an MLB game a la William Shakespeare. In response to a perceived bad call, the umpire is told: "Get thee to an OPTOMETRIST!".
Yes, and mob mentality sets in at the ballpark. When things go wrong, we really lose control of our faculties. How hilarious that we think we can call balls and strikes better than an umpire when we're hundreds of feet away!
Good point, good point...although I have to admit I've enjoyed all the Angel Hernandez jokes and memes that have been flying around the internet.
I once kept the clock for a middle school basketball game, and it was the most stressful evening of my life, lol. My heart rate still elevates at the memory of the crowd screaming "CLOCK" at me.
Maybe I just haven't had a very stressful life, or maybe umps and refs should be sainted.
Maybe both!
And umpires get more attention because of the perception that they have a huge impact on the game because they make a call on almost every play, but they just don’t have that big of an impact. Football officials have a far bigger impact specifically because they don’t make calls on every play but when they do, it’s often after the fact, taking points off the board.
Spot on, Noah. I can’t believe how home plate umps manage to make the correct calls so often, with such a high %. In fact, I don’t know how they manage to see the ball so well, with the velocity and movement of pitchers today.
Then there is the psychological pressure when everyone is depending on you to get the calls — at the bases too! — right, to just blend into the background because you are doing your job well.
I umpired my way through grad school, we really needed the extra money. But just slow pitch softball. A quite different game. No balls-strikes controversies (well, did the arching, then falling ball clip the edge of the mat or not? 😭) Two nights a week with three games each night, then played ball a third night. Softball life! The guys took everything so seriously, so much griping snd yelling - at me! Just for calls on the bases (ok, with only one umpire per game, I had to be everywhere at once, so…). I did not like it at all. Did not like tossing guys out of games for excessive griping (the rules were you were not actually permitted to gripe more than a whine or two, certainly no badgering, but that didn’t stop them). And really, I was good at it, the calls. But the grief of a bad call or missing something would stay with me for days, along with the furious complaints that followed.
I think the emotional part of umpiring in professional baseball is extremely tough. So I am also amazed how well professional umps do that work… professionally.
(And then too, the road to becoming an mlb ump is extraordinarily difficult, and umpiring your way up the ladder through the minor leagues has to be as hard than playing your way up the ladder. Bless them all.)
You make a great point. How do these umps deal with the difficulties of the job AND being hated by fans and players alike? Given that environment, it's natural that every now and then we'd end up with one like Angel, who often brandished his authority just for the hell of it.
BTW, I think you've have just talked me out of my retirement plan.
People are rejoicing at him being gone, but the same anger and energy that is directed towards him will just be redirected to someone else.
On another note, I just received my Amazon despatch notice to say that your book is on the way to me here in Scotland. Hoping it arrives before I fly out to NYC next week so I can read it on the plane! 😊
Nice! Are you gonna catch any professional baseball while you're in NYC? Or, in leiu of that, maybe a Mets game?
😅
Absolutely! My wife got us tickets to the Yankees-Dodgers series, all three games. It’s a 40th birthday gift to me. I can’t wait. It’s been a rough year and I’m currently recovering from skin cancer surgery, but the thought of this trip is getting me through! Trying to distract myself with baseball and watching as many sports movies as possible at the moment 😊
Sports fans always want a scapegoat when things don't go exactly as they want them to go. Baseball umpires, along with their professional cousins, the referees of pro football, basketball and hockey, are fairly obvious ones. Viewing at home sober I can respect their abilities, but it's hard to appreciate the work of officials when your mental processing abilities are impaired by alcohol, as is the case with some (but not all) of the fans.
The funniest ump insult I've ever heard was in the comedy duo Wayne & Shuster's portrayal of an MLB game a la William Shakespeare. In response to a perceived bad call, the umpire is told: "Get thee to an OPTOMETRIST!".
Yes, and mob mentality sets in at the ballpark. When things go wrong, we really lose control of our faculties. How hilarious that we think we can call balls and strikes better than an umpire when we're hundreds of feet away!