A Few Thoughts About Umpiring

Compiled from various sources, by Joel Balberman

• The quality of the game can never exceed the quality of the umpiring available.

• Every game is a new game, every pitch a big one.

• Let the umpire lose his temper, and he's through. Or let him get pushed around, and he's through.

• There are only six words that describe what an umpire should be: QUICK TO THINK. SLOW TO ANGER.

• Perhaps the most difficult part of being a successful umpire is the ability to ignore outside influences and internal pressures and to maintain absolute concentration on the game and only the game, including each individual play and pitch.

• "Der ain't no close plays, me lad. Dey is either dis or dat."

• In the public mind, the umpire appears at best as a necessary evil; at worst as a Neanderthal bent upon robbing the home team of its just desserts. How else to explain the singular propensity of umpires to blow calls obvious even to those sitting in the last row of the upper deck, and to misinterpret rules known even to those who have never read a rule book?

• The way to study the rule book is to read a rule and then put it in play in your mind, visualize it, make application of that rule to the play. In your mind you see the play in the field, and then, when it comes up, it's like it's been there before.

• In order to be a good umpire, you have to have the desire to learn something every day. Every umpire feels that he/she is the best umpire there is. But the best umpire is the one who feels that way and then learns something the next day.

• The toughest call an umpire has to make is not the half swing; the toughest call is throwing a guy out of the game after you blew the hell out of the play.

• To be an umpire, you must have good judgment, good eyesight and confidence that you can do the job. You do not know or care to know who you are calling safe or out, and when the ball reaches home plate, you know only that it is either a ball or a strike. That's integrity; if an umpire loses that, he's lost everything. If players and managers know an umpire calls the play the way he sees it, they will respect him even if he might not be the best of umpires.