The State of Baseball

[davidlimbaugh]

It's the chase that gets them, not the end result. I've made more than a few people mad with my 'half scholarship to Jr. college' comment, but that's the case a lot of the time. Most kids get fractions of scholarships, not full rides. It was my good fortune to play with a couple of kids whose Dads were college baseball coaches. They saw my team play from Little League through High School and legion ball. So............we were seen. A small handful got scholarships of any kind. A smaller handful got drafted. We could ask them at any time where we stood, what we needed to work on and get an honest answer. And the college coaches kids were playing rec ball too. That's what we played. I'll say this. If you're not going to enjoy your kids baseball career, or athletic career for that matter, unless he's signing an athletic scholarship, you're missing the point and the fun. Parents get way too wound up about these sort of things.

 

Ditto! If parents of incoming freshmen players in high school come in asking "what is this program going to do for us?" they are going to leave disappointed. If they come in asking "what can we do for the program?" they are in for four great years....

 

We have a wall of baseball signs on the side of our hitting facility documenting all of our kids' college and pro playing places. A lot of awesome kids had great high school careers and never got their name on that wall....

[BackinTN]

Tongue in cheek here. Do they have youth travel ball in Cuba, the Dominican, etc.? They seem to be developing major league prospects at a very high rate when you consider country populations versus number of players in MLB. I played ball with a kid that grew up in another country and used a tin can as a glove until he was 16 years old. He spent 12 years in the majors as an infielder.

 

Travel ball does help develop some players just by playing a whole lot of games, but in my opinion, travel ball is often about the show of money and bragging rights based on some strange assumed prestige.

 

Kids that can play get found. Great talents that get missed can cost a scout a career. That doesn't happen very often for a reason and it doesn't have very much to do with travel ball at all.

[Indian]

True about DR but not much basketball or football there either.

[rcpatriot]

Been several years ago, but my experience with travel ball was a good experience, as a parent and as well as a coach. But....today there are few true travel ball teams. Everytime you turn around a new one has been started. Several arguments can be made on why this is, but my issue is with the expense these days. I understand inflation, but some of these organizations are charging $1500+ initial investment, as well as monthly dues, for 8 yr olds, 9 yr olds, and 10 yr olds. And, people are paying it! Why?! Most 8U tournaments are free entry fee, even USSSA/BPA. Most 9U/10U tournaments average $100 entry fee. Sorry folks, but that's a lot of money not including the cost of admission, concessions, fast food, accommodations, gas, etc.

Have we lost our minds?

Recently I read a post on FB about a team that won a major berth to a sanctioned World Series. On this post it stated that it was going to cost $3000/kid and was asking for donations to help send there player to this WS tournament. "Once in a lifetime opportunity", they stated. Really??...........for a 10 year old! After doing some checking on my own, the $3000 is what has been stated it would cost each family for the trip.

What happens to the team member that can't afford that trip? He get left behind to not experience that "Once in a lifetime opportunity"?

 

"Once in a lifetime" opportunities are everyday for a 10yr old. I think this "once in a lifetime opportunity" is really for the parents!!

[cocheese]

This has been a good, healthy conversation. Lots of good points and even some throw back pictures. Let's change up a little, shall we? Another hot topic, and one that most people can't seem to keep a level of civility about themselves when discussing, umpires. I hope we can keep this constructive, but I do live in the real world. What can be done to improve the quality of umpires within the TSSAA? I know the answers seem obvious, like "learn the rules", but does anyone have specifics to insure quality officiating? Who knows, someone at the TSSAA office may be on here and take some notes.

[catsbackr]

Local umpire associations must take an active interest in improving the umpires within their organizations. By this I mean, teaching through camps, classroom instruction prior to the season involving situational discussions, rules discussions, etc., maybe a mentoring program for younger umpires coming into the association, etc.

 

The real problem is going to be seen in a few years. Local HS umpire associations are seeing fewer and fewer young umpires joining, so you are going to have older umpires umpiring longer and longer, without replacements on the horizon. THAT IS THE REAL PROBLEM!

 

If you think your umpiring is bad now, wait until there aren't enough umpires to call your games or you have to settle for 1 umpire for a varsity game.

[ksgovols]

Having been on both sides of the fence I have opinions on this topic too! Most of the umpires I've been associated with do a good job. 90% of it is knowing your rotations and timing as far as being in the right position to make the call. You're going to miss a few. Good coaches recognize that and know how to have a discussion with an umpire without showing him up. Good umpires know how to manage the game and get along with coaches. While one of the mantras is that umpires only want 2 things, strikes and outs, they do want to get the calls right and they don't care who wins. I think that umpiring gets easier as the talent level goes up. The kids will make the calls themselves instead of looking at blue to see if he got it right and the parents have educated themselves after 10 years of watching baseball games. If the umpire manages the game and keeps his strike zone and the coach puts a kid on the mound that knows the zip code of the strike zone, games will fly by. The nightmare is one kid pounding the strike zone and the other pitcher all over the place. Most of the coach/umpire clashes that I've seen are ego related. Either an umpire trying to be the show instead of the kids or a coach or umpire who can't let go of the past and brings it to the next game. I went through the TSSAA training and it's very good. The year I went to the seminar the thing that the TSSAA focused on was not letting foul language go from a coach and particularly not from a kid. While I agreed with that in theory it just added another layer of judgement calls. A kid mutters something under his breath after striking out and blue starts tossing. To me, you address that with the coach between innings and keep the game moving. Coach isn't going to get tossed because it's out of his pocket. Blue knows that. I look at umpires like I do coaches and players. There's good ones, bad ones, skinny ones, fat ones. Control the things you can control and don't put too much effort in the things you can't. Good coaches will never show up the umpire and won't make excuses for their team's performance. Good umpires will ask for help from their partner, get together and try to the best of their abilities to get it right.

[cocheese]

I have been on both sides of this as well. When I was an umpire I found that the ones that needed to come to the weekly meetings, didn't. they also didn't show up for the on field instruction either. I like the mentor idea though, could be something there. You are one 100% correct catsbackr. There are not enough umpires and very few young ones joining. Umpiring isn't the most physical thing in the world, but if you're pusing 50 or 60, it can seem like it somedays! My association usually had enough guys to fill the games. I've heard that hasn't been as easy these past two years. We also sent guys to nearby associations to cover games they couldn't on a fairly regular basis. In the last 4 years only one new young guy has join the assocation. A few more have joined that are already pushing the age limit, so they won't be much help for very long. Very few new guys acutally take an active role in improving their knowledge, so it seems to me. I feel like we may be heading to one umpire in the not so distant future.

[cbg]

JMO, but we now have semi-professional umpires at the high school level. Some of these people umpire three and four sports to help support their family. The problem is that they are so focused on making money they never put in the time necessary to get really good and one sport. I ask one umpire if he was going to go to a college umpire camp and he said he was not, he had 4 football games to officiate on that Saturday. He also informed me that if he was selected to umpire the college games he would have close to $1000.00 invested before he umpired his first game and it would be difficult for him to recoup his investment the first year. This individual felt that it would be financially advantageous for him to umpire the high school games. The reason that its difficult to get young umpires is due to the political "good old boy" system that has been used to assign the prestigious games and tournaments. This year there was a young umpire that had played D1 baseball, attended one of the professional baseball umpire schools, umpired numerous amateur & high school games, umpired the New York Penn Leage but was not ask to join the local college umpire association after attending there camp last Fall. He was called 2 weeks ago by the Professional Baseball Umpires Association and told to report to Florida as he would be doing rookie & class A ball this year. He is good enough to umpire professional baseball but the local college association didn't want him? Politics is the reason that young people want nothing todo with umpiring.

Edited June 7, 2013 by cbg

[davidlimbaugh]

Hey CatsBackr! We go way back, don't we?

 

What frustrates me to no end is an umpire that literally has no business calling a high school baseball game. I can name some. And have seen a few I can not name. Balls-strikes, outs-safes are one thing. But losing control of a game and not knowing some of the basic rules of the game - that is what I get frustrated with.

 

What is really frustrating is when you share this information with an assigner, giving specific examples, and they just brush it aside, even when they are at the park and witness it for themselves - ugh!

 

You are right, umpires are getting hard to find in some places. And I can name some young people who are doing a great job and will only get better. But a problem I see is political in a different way. Coaches want to see the better umpires at their games, but the assigner has to make sure everyone gets games or some will quit on him. Problem is by doing that some of the good ones who want (and know they should be working) the better games are not assigned to them and lesser ones are to try to keep everyone happy.

 

I don't get mad when an umpire kicks a call - they kicked 3 calls in one play on TV last night in Colorado! I get mad when it is the same umpire kicking the same call 3 times in one game.... I can honestly name 3-4 games over 20 years that I can say with a straight face that blue cost us the game. But by the same token, in those 3-4 games and every other one, if two kids hit doubles instead of popups or a kid hits a ground ball to the right side to move a kid to third and the next kid hits a fly ball to score him instead of both striking out we win as well and that wasn't blue's fault. SS's boot ground balls and RFs drop fly balls. Baseball is the only sport where the line score on the scoreboard has a column for Errors. And umpires get a lot more right than they do wrong - and try to play a game without one....

[cocheese]

You know in the early days, very early days of baseball, the umpire didn't make the calls. There were no strikes or balls. Safe/out was called by the players and the umpire only intervened if they could not agree. The umpire would even get the crowd's input on really close calls. Umpires were more concerned with game management and little bit of entertainment as well. HS umps today should be a little more concerned with game management. A 7 inning game should not take 3 hours to play.

[ksgovols]

LOL. That's what a mentor will teach the young guys! For the money makers, you lose umpires to fastpitch softball. It's an hour, hour and a half max and all the tournament games you want on the weekends. I've seen TSSAA guys at youth leagues on Saturdays getting 4 or 5 games a day with hour and a half time limits, so from that standpoint, high school games are the least efficient model for making money and the games start at 3:30 or 4:00 in many cases. I love to hear old umpire's war stories though. There are some priceless ones. I saw a kid hit a homerun in a LL state championship game with 4 umpires and the one on first held up his arms and called a ground rule double. What's more, nobody challenged the call. I was the blue on second and after the inning was over he asked "Did that ball go over the fence in the air?" Yup. "I sold it didn't I?"