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Random Tournament Thoughts
by Dave
Monday, June 25, 2007
I have some random thoughts regarding fastpitch tournaments which I'll share with you.
Watch the umpire, watch, watch the umpire, is he high or is he low? Is he fast or is he slow? I don't know but I dont care, we can't go anywhere!
The umpires need to walk to the field with more than just their equipment on. They need to have an idea before they call "play ball." They need to have a firm grasp on the rulebook in general, not to mention the one applicable to the kind of play they are officiating. They need to have a sense of the strike zone. They need to make sure they are of sound mind and body. They owe the hardworking girls playing the games this much. They need to earn the $35-50 they are paid for each game.
Simple Balls and StrikesRecently I watched a group of ASA umpires call a game in which there was a decidedly low strike zone. There's nothing wrong with that provided it is consistently applied. Consistency is critical. And if you're low, you ought not be high also! During one game, there was a very tall girl from, I think, Houston, Texas who had some difficulty at the plate. She was 6 foot something, perhaps 4 inches, and her legs were extremely long and thin. Her lower legs went on forever meaning her knees were pretty high. When this girl stood in there, at least from my vantage point, it was difficult to figure out exactly where her knees began because she had one of those broad-based stances and socks and equipment covering her whole legs. I watched as strike after strike was called as the ball passed mid-shin, a good 4 inches or more below her knees. That was OK since it was consistently applied. The trouble came when there was inconsistency on the high strike. If you're going to call that low of a strike zone, you've got to give somewhere upstairs. These umps did for a while but then, every once in a while, they called a bad high one. A pitch was thrown across this girl's chin and the right arm went up, punching her out. That's not fair. The strike zone cannot span toes to nose.
This was a showcase tournament and this girl was working to try to get some college coaches to notice her. But she had no chance. The inconsistentcy of the high strike had her before she came up to bat the next time. I saw three total at-bats and she looked completely confused in all of them. They called an excessively large strike zone and she went down looking twice before finally putting bat on a bad pitch up in the zone which she grounded out weakly to first. She was protecting against the first bad call made against her. Now, at first we thought this girl maybe didn't belong in this class but in hindsight, that just cannot be. Most of her teammates were destined for top 25 Div I schools. SAhe could not have been as bad as she appeared to be. The blame has to fall on the shoulders of the umps.
On another day, I watched as my girls went down looking multiple times on pitches above their mouths. I don't want my girls going down looking but I don't want them swinging at pitches in their eyes either. I was getting tense and angry. Then one of my best hitters, a girl who never goes for bad pitches, walks frequently, and puts the ball into play the rest of her at-bats, took a strike which crossed her letters, the letters printed across the top of her helmet. I made some snide comment which apparently caught the umps attention. He spoke to me between innings. He said, "coach, I'm calling that high strike because when the pitch comes in high, your girls are standing up making the pitch cross their letters." I said, "look, you call what you call this game and this tournament, but I want you to do me a favor when you get home. I want you to pull out all of your rulebooks and turn each one to the section which discusses the strike zone. Then I want you to call me if you find a single rulebook which does not discuss the zone in terms of a batter's 'natural stance' - as opposed to when she is standing tall, feet together, like she might do when someone is measuring her height. The strike zone is determined AND FIXED when the batter assumes her natural batting stance. It has nothing to do with her standing erect." This guy made a face but I hope he took my advice. The only discription of the zone I have ever seen published in a rulebook read like this:
"The strike zone is the area over any part of home plate between the batter's forward shoulder (sometimes armpit is referred to) and the top of her knees when she assumes a natural batting stance. The top of the ball must be on the horizontal plane to be called a strike. A strike is also called when either side of the ball in within the vertical plane. Where the ball contacts the ground or catcher's glove has no bearing on the actual strike zone." (emphasis my own) Note that this is a hybrid of several rulebook descriptions of the strike zone. Some of the words will not appear in any rulebook. But the phrase "when the batter assumes a natural stance" is included, with some variation, in every rulebook. And if no part of the ball crosses at the knees or shoulders/armpits, it is a ball, period. I understand how difficult it is to call balls and strikes but the umpire is paid to have reasonable judgment on this matter.
Visual CluesI was sitting in the stands near third base as the batter bunted to try to move the girls from first and second along. A fielder picked it up and turned to third. My first thoughts were this was a bad decision. There was one out already, the girl from second had been stealing bases all game, and she had a good jump on the play, and the right play on this should have been to first. I figured I was right when the runner from second slid hard, jarring the base up in the air. The defensive player had her foot on that base when it was dislodged and she began to tumble but she held her balance long enough to make the catch and then applied a needless tag to the runner on the ground. Everyone turned to the umpire though they fully expected to see him make the safe sign and were not really paying much attention to him, that is, until he punched her out! He was alone in the officiating capacity at this early round game. That's a difficult job. But there is no way he could have missed the fact that the player covering the bag had been knocked over by the sliding runner. She made a great play just to catch that ball since she was falling to the ground. The tag was meaningless since there was a force on the play but it took great athletic ability to make it. I mention this because I am left wondering if the ump called her out on the tag. He never exclaimed on the tag but you just cannot miss the kid of visual clue of the base being dislodged before the ball hit leather when you're umping a game alone.
For the sake of argument, I'm going to assume the ump called the girl out on the tag because I can't see how he saw her as out on the force with the base coverer falling down as she caught the ball. Then again, I can't see how he would have called her out on the tag with the base tumbling in foul territory. But I want to discuss this briefly because I have seen kids called out on a tag after dislodging the base like that. And this is a misapplication of the rules.
The way every rulebook I checked reads, when a base is dislodged, the base is "assumed to have followed the runner." In other words, when a runner slides hard into third, the base goes flying and the kid continues to slide, say into foul territory, she cannot be tagged out for over-sliding the base. The base is assumed to have followed her. She is the base, if you will. She cannot truly overslide the base since it has been dislodged. You cannot miss that visual clue.
On another occassion, I saw yet another visual clue that is intended to help umpires, especially when there is only one working a game. We played a tournament in which the fields were, thankfully, lined every game. I observed something which I thought at first was unusual. I noticed that the lines in the outfield had been painted into place. That's good and should cut down some of the work, right? Well, not exactly. I observed the liner dude finish the infield and then run down each of the painted lines with his chalk machine. I wondered why he bothered doing that since the paint machine was nearby and the lines were already in great shape. I realized my stupidity later when it finally occurred to me that the chalk is a great visual clue for umpires calling balls fair and foul. If you see chalk dislodged and flying in the air, the ball has to be fair since any contact with the chalk is contact with fair territory.
Most rulebooks with which I am familiar state something like fair territory is that part of the field within and including the fouls lines ... home plate, the foul lines and poles are part of fair territory. In other words, the lines and poles aren't "foul" poles and lines, they are "fair" poles and lines. If a hit ball makes contact with poles, it is fair. If it makes contact with the foul lines beyond first and third, on first contact with the ground, it must be a fair ball.
When you've got only one umpire calling a game, it is extremely difficult for him or her to make fair and foul calls on balls down the line. In the heat of the moment, not to mention the heat and exhaustion after say three games on a hot summer day, the eyes can play tricks on you. An obviously (by a couple inches) fair ball can appear to the eyes and brain as a foul ball. Vice versa is also true. And you really cannot get mad at the hot, tired single plate ump for making a mistake like this regardless of how much he or she is being paid. But when chalk flies, that's quite another deal.
I went to the snack bar to buy some chicken fingers for my daughter. I grabbed a coke for myself too. The snack bar was located in back of the four home plates at the complex. As I made my way back to the game we were watching, I knew that it was tied and this was going to be the last inning. While I was waiting at the snack bar, I observed a runner get on, get bunted to second and advance on a PB after which the batter was struck out. So I knew it was tied with a runner on third in the bottom of the last and two outs. As I was walking back, I could see the count go to 1-2 on the batter. The pitcher did a smart thing and threw outside. The batter popped a ball down into no-girl's land behind first and just out of reach of all three fielders who came together. I did not have a great view of the ball because the backstop was covered in a green film so pitchers wouldn't be distracted. But I very clearly saw the ump signal foul ball as white powder rose up in a cloud behind first. So I ran to get a better view. As I came into the clear, the white puffy cloud was still airborn and then gradually settled. I handed the chicken fingers over to my kid and turned to ask the parents of the players if what I thought I had seen was what happened. They could barely speak. One babbled something about giving that ump a piece of his mind. Most hadn't yet closed their mouths. Then the batter popped out and the game was over in a tie - this was a seeding round game. The most incredulous father stood there staring at the ump until the man went through the fence surrounding the field. The father trotted over and had a few brief words and turned back, madder than ever.
The father returned and told the other parents about his conversation. He had told the ump he had blown that call. The ump had retorted, "Get a life, you're the only person on the planet who saw it that way. That wasn't chalk, it was dirt." I understand that umps must develop A) thick skin, and B) handy retorts with which to dispense anxious parents and coaches. It was too bad this ump hadn't developed his eyes well enough to distinguish flying dirt from chalk. By the way, this ball was down the rightfield line just beyond the infield. There was no free standing dirt that far down. The field was grass covered at that point!
On another, related issue, I recently saw another misapplication of the fair/foul ball rule. In a semi-final game, the score was 0-0 or 1-1 and it went into international tiebreaker. The first batter up for the visiting team bunted a nice bunt down the third base line but it rolled just barely foul. Yet the plate umpire called it fair because a player standing in fair territory bent over and, panicking, picked it up. The defensive team freaked out and I can't say that I blame them. They were quite rude to the ump and the ump apparently had a reply ready for them.
I wasn't so much watching this game as I happened by it. I was walking past this field when I found myself near the spot where the ball was rolling so I stopped and watched it. The girl bent over and grabbed the ball and the plate ump's arm went up indicating fair at that exact moment. I realized this was a very bad call but I kept walking to get to my destination. Then I heard the uproar and turned back but was too far out of earshot to hear the words exchanged after the defensive team screamed at the ump. Later I would hear that the ump instructed the coaches not to blame him when they hadn't trained their kids properly not to touch a ball in fair territory.
I do not think I heard exactly what the ump had said but one person thought he said a kid had touched the ball in fair territory prior to the moment I saw the ball picked up. I think that explanation was wrong because we're talking about a ball that was maybe ten feet down the line. Nobody could have touched it. The ump must have said the kid touched while SHE was in fair territory. There was nobody else there. And I saw it picked up. That was done by the first player to get there. The only way I can reconcile this in my mind is to assume the ump looked at the player in fair territory and called in fair because she wasn't in foul ground. If that's not the way it happened, I apologize but I've seen this same type of call a number of times. And it is a mistake.
The way every rulebook I have ever seen is written is: A fair ball is judged according to position of the ball "not as to the position of the player" when she touches it. That's an absolute. It's the ball, not the player. I find myself sometimes forgetting this rule during the heat of games. I believe even major leaguer baseball players sometimes forget this - I've seen some jump into foul territory before grabbing the ball. I have, in the past, gotten anxious when my kids have approached the ball rolling foul from fair territory. But they do not have to have a foot or both feet in foul ground to pick up a foul ball. It's where the ball is located that matters. And I'm not an ump. Umps should know this without even contemplating it. yet time and again, I see this mistake made. It is inexcusable.
Field ConditionsAn older team in our organization played a tournament recently and I went to watch. Some of the fields were pretty good considering there was a substantial rainstorm the night before. I commended the work of the crew which must have been up and working before the sun rose that morning. Yet, there were some things about the fields which stood out to me after the tournament was over and the work of the crews had long been forgotten. The first thing which struck me was the complex at which these games were played was a rec league's home base. There were four fields in total, two of them typical skin-infield softball fields and two grass covered baseball fields complete with mounds. That's a travesty and a potentially dangerous circumstance.
My organization hosted a tournament just a few weeks ago. There is one location with two true softball fields and one very nice baseball field. We could have done things like this organization and held games there but we chose not to, instead making girls travel a few blocks between locations (to a very limited extent) in order to make sure they played exclusively on legitimate softball fields.
This organization chose to keep the girls together in one location but to play half their games on baseball fields. Softball is not meant to be played on a grass infield. Everything about the game changes when you do it on grass. The ball skips rather than bounces. Grounders slow to less than half the speed. Play is slowed and runners make first easily on grounders to either side of the shortstop. It is not softball as we know it.
Worse still is the existence of a mound on the field. Many places my kids and their teams have played have "shaved" pitching mounds off before conducting tournaments. That's expensive but it is a requirement of conducting a reasonably high level fastpitch tournament. That's because the mound itself changes the pitcher's delivery and makes it dangerous to field balls in the event she has to go back.
I can't express how upset it makes me when I see a kid from any team have difficulty hitting the strike zone because the mound throws off her delivery. Once recently while watching my own kid's game, I looked over to see how another team was doing on an adjacent field, a baseball field. "Hey, I know that pitcher. She's very good," I thought. Between our innings, I watched her first one in the circle. She threw ball after ball above the strike zone. I couldn't imagine why she was doing this since I know her to have excellent control. So I walked over to get a better look. I saw her go into her wind up and she was all off-balance because the pitching plate had to be placed on a slight hill, about three or four inches above where it should be AND the whole pitching area was slopped downwards. She had to adjust but it wasn't fair to expect her to adjust that much. She had a bad game and her team lost to an inferior one with a poor pitcher. The poor pitcher didn't have to adjust nearly as much as the good one since she hadn't locked down her mechanics yet anyway. My first thoughts were I hope this experience doesn't throw off the kid having trouble. My second thoughts were I hope she doesn't get hurt trying to modify her delivery. It took her a lot to get her release points back later that day when she played on a legitimate field. But she didn't get hurt, thank goodness.
I've witnessed pitchers get hurt due to the existence of a pitcher's mound for reasons other than changing their delivery. Often when a ball is popped up right behind the pitcher, she's the only one that can get to it. I've seen far too many kids fall down as they walked backwards to play the pop and tripped over the whole in the mound made by baseball pitchers or the second rubber still cemented into the ground. It would be a small matter to break an ankle on a field like that. It isn't just something everyone should get used to. It is downright dangerous. Girls Fastpitch Softball is played on a flat, dirt field, with one pitcher's plate, period. If you can't find a location without grass infields and pitcher's mounds, don't hold a tournament.
My second observations regarding field conditions has to do with the overall condition of fields used to host big, competitive tournaments. I have seen Herculean efforts made by the crew to get fields in playable condition. But sometimes things are forgotten. Most effort is expended on the infield. And sometimes nobody walks the outfield to locate problem areas. This can cause extremely dangerous conditions for outfielders. Sometimes there can be a minor sinkhole or large mud puddle right in areas where fielders are likely to be running without looking at the ground like along the base lines. That's a bad situation and one that can sometimes be rectified by a crew. But if the crew and tournament director are not around, there is nothing the teams can do, except play in the dangerous conditions. My one word of advice is good tournaments always have an easily accessible site manager who knows where a crew and the director can be found.
Finally, there is no denying that in fastpitch softball, pitching is the critical, deciding factor in most games. Aside from not having baseball pitching mounds on the field, more effort needs to be made cleaning up the pitcher's area before and between games. Holes must be filled and not merely combed over, pulling in loose dirt to fill the empty spots.
We played at a place this year which had a 35 foot rubber in front of the 40 foot one. During 40 foot games, the organization put a bunch of soft, loose dirt on top of the 10U rubber. Between innings, the ump kicked loose dirt back on top of it. This accomplishes absolutely nothing. The only way a 40 foot game ought to be played on a field like that is slow pitch. Fastpitch windmilling is an intense physical exercise using explosive force. Many pitcher aged in the 12U ands 14U bracket perform their leg drives on at least some pitches in that 5 foot area where the 35 foot rubber is located. Either the thing has to be removed or games shouldn't be played there. This one was cemented into the ground and could not be removed. OK, that's tough, so DON'T PLAY THERE!
And even otherwise very good fields can get substantially beat up. The area where pitchers pushoff and land gets the most abuse. You can't just rake dirt over these spots. Good tournaments have mound dirt on site and pounding machines to firm it in place. And reputable fields use thinker dirt that adheres to itself when wet, at least in the batter's and pitcher's areas. The kind of sandy, loose, dry stuff is cheaper but it needs to be replaced almost constantly.
Everyone gets tiredIt isn't difficult to imagine how tired the players get when they play two, three, four or more games in a single day. Even we parents get pretty darn tired. I know many times when I get home from a tournament at which I've done nothing more than sat on my duff, maybe eaten a few french fries or bad hot dogs, and talked amongst friends, I often fall asleep hours before my normal bed time. The umps often have to officiate more games in a day than I watch as a fan. They must get very tired. On seeding days, this may be more so since there are often games every hour and a half or three quarters. Many of the tournaments we play will have 6, 8 or more games at the same location in a day. And most often, the same guy, gal or duo call the whole shottin' match. That's really tough. These crews ought to be split so an ump gets one on and one off.
That's seeding days but I've witnessed the same sort of thing happen on elimination days. Two guys handle everything at one particular field with no more than 15 minutes to towel off, get a drink and maybe sit out of the sun. When we see people do that in other walks of life, we assume their general judgment is impaired. Yet we allow or require umps to get to the point of heat exhaustion and still make calls potentially critical to the outcome of a game. And some of these people are not in very good physical condition.
One of my daughters participated in a game at Pony Nationals last year at which there was an umpire who, judging by his looks, must have been almost 80 years old. As I told you shortly afterwards, Pony has some of the best and some of the worst umpires I have ever seen at their national tournament. This fellow was off the scales at the bottom. I got upset over some of the calls he made and decided to watch him on every pitch. He was obviously suffering from the hot weather. On more than one occassion, I saw him staring at the ground in front of his toes as the pitcher went into her windup, and that was with a runner on base. One some occassions, he didn't look up even when the pitch was thrown. More than once, he fixed his gaze to the ground through consecutive pitches, never even looking up after the pitch was thrown, call made, ball returned to pitcher and second pitch thrown, etc. I began to wonder if he was going to make it through the game. He did, but I was a little frightened for him.
My conclusion here is, what I said before, these folks should be given ample breaks in accordance with their physical condition, and, more importantly, they must be supervised in some fashion. Had any supervisor been at this game, they would have had this guy pulled from the field, perhaps given medical attention, and another ump sent to replace him. He didn't belong on the field. That sort of situation needs to be addressed. One way it could be done is via annual medical release forms for all umps. Such forms should specify the possible game conditions and require a medical doctor to state affirmatively that this or that fellow or gal is up to the task. Doctors wouldn't do that in certain cases like this fellow I saw at Pony Nationals. One day, one of these fellows is going to die at the fields and somebody is going ot be sued into submission for allowing him to go out there under these circumstances.
ConclusionThere you have some random tournament thoughts I had this morning. I'm sure many of you have your own tournament observations and experiences. That's part of what makes this so interesting and fun. I do want to say that I'd rather have my kids playing than not. I'd rather they play on lousy fields with bad umps than not play at all. But there's a fair amount of money kicking around this show. And the value is a bit inconsistent. While I do want my kids to play at any cost, I believe it is only fair to charge in accordance with the product being offered. A $450 tournament with crummy fields or third rate umps is not a bargain. One with both is a ripoff. Umps need to come mentally and physically prepared to earn their $35-50 per game - that can, by the way, sometimes add up to several hundred bucks in a day. Tournament hosts must make sure their fields are in playable condition and not baseball diamonds filled with health hazards. They need to be accessible when games are going so that problems can be dealt with. And organizations hosting large tournaments involving big numbers of umpires should make some sort of mechanism available so that grievances (not game protests) can be aired and problems avoided in succeeding years.Labels: rules, umpiring
Permanent Link: Random Tournament Thoughts
 
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