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Can't Fight City Hall Or Bad Calls
by Dave
Monday, June 01, 2009
I've seen some pretty bad calls lately. So have you. I guarantee it. But, as I constantly must remind myself, you can't fight them. Worse, by arguing them or mouthing off from the stands, you very well can make matters worse. I advise against arguing calls. I hope you hear me on this. I hope I can take my own advice!
Recently, one of my daughters played a tournament in which the championship game was played against the host team. For years I have sung the praises of the tournament's umpires. I felt they were consistent, fair, and generally as talented a crew as any I had ever seen operate under any organization's sanction. This tournament was, with a few exceptions, not any different. But, man oh man, when we got into the championship game against the host, everything went out the window.
Our pitcher had a pipe into which to pitch. Their pitcher had a dumpster. I was thankful it wasn't my daughter doing the pitching. And ... then ... our young, inexperienced pitcher started to lose her cool and in came my daughter. Oh, no!
My kid is very experienced and understands that umpires have different strike zones. She also understands that sometimes the umpires are very close to being against you and for your opponent. We played against a host team at Pony nationals several years ago. I wrote about that at the time. My kid had learned a big lesson back then. Too bad I'm not as good a student as she is!
So my daughter adapted to the pipe, our kids swung at anything close, hitting many, and we were able to pull out a win thanks to an error by one of their outfielders. There's an important lesson in this experience. You can expend a large amount of psychic energy to get angry at bad calls. Alternatively, you can keep your boil down to a simmer and just keep going. If the softball gods are on your side that day, you can overcome some pretty bad umpiring.
Importantly, if you allow your emtoions to get the btter of you, if you give yourself a handy excuse on which you can blame your future loss, tyhe chances of experiencing a loss go up dramatically. Take the WCWS now underway. Danielle Lawrie has quite a good drop curve. Thrown, as it is, around 70 mph, it is pretty much unhittable. An extremely disciplined crew might lay off that pitch. You're not going to hit the thing. You might just as well take it. But if it is being called for strikes, what the heck are you gonna do then?
The camera angle which ESPN uses for its broadcasts is sometimes that great view of the pitch over the shoulder of the umpire. While, geometrically speaking, there is some room for error in perception, I think you get a pretty good idea of where the pitch is. Lawrie threw several drop curves which I feel comfortable claiming would get the ring up, a good 90% of the time. But yesterday, she got not one of these. The umps were pinching her east to west. I'm pretty sure she was getting upset with the zone but she didn't let it show that much. And she found a way to get through while not costing her team a shot at the overall title. She struggled for sure but she didn't let it take her out of the game.
A local HS team purportedly faced a similar pinching. I saw a few of these pitches late in the game. I wouldn't ordinarily say that the ump's pinching was egregious per se. But I also happened to witness the strike zone when the other team's pitcher was chucking. She through several pitches which were between 2 and 4 inches further outside and up and out of the zone to boot that were called strikes. nbsp; There was definitely something going on here but I didn't see enough of it to be 100% sure.
Several weeks ago, we were watching one of several games out in the outfield by some stands that had been set up. One of the umps from an earlier game took up a seat by us. She's a nice lady who is very good about handing out advice for parents of softball players so we struck up several conversations while we watched a game. She made some important points about plate umps and making the adjustment to their zone rather than getting upset. She told of an acquaintance who has a very low zone, remarkably low. Another has a very high zone. Some are big east and west. Some like the inside corner but not the outside. Some umps are very large north and south but want to see the whole ball come over white. There are nearly as many strike zones as there are umpires.
And there is nothing you can do about it. You can't go into warm-ups, realize that your inside stuff is working best today, and then dial up the ump who gives the inside but not the outside. You have to fit into whatever you happen to get on the day where your XYZ pitch is moving the best.
This is the primary reason why I think pitchers should NOT really develop two or three pitches. We discussed this a few months ago but the leading wisdom suggest something left or down, something up or right, and something with a chnge of speed. I think you really need to have something up, down, right, and left, and, and, and something with a change of speed, or two somethings.
You never know what you are going to get. You may get a guy who normally has a very broad zone and today his feet are swollen, his shoes pinching him, maybe his blood pressure is up or he feels a little queasy. Maybe the plate ump wants to get back home to put medicine on his pet parakeet's beak. Maybe he or she really has absolutely nothing to do later and privately hopes this game goes 4 hours. Who can say what the mental or physicval state of the umpire is going to be? Who can say which ump will show up at the biggest game of your year. You've got to be ready regardless.
So tyhe first lesson today, boys and girls, is you cannot control the plate ump no matter how badly you would like to. Getting mad serves absolutely no purpose. OK? Do you have that, Dave?
There was a contentious game the other day at which there were any number of bad calls. I didn't see that much of it because I was at another game. I stopped by in the 8th or 9th inning. The fans for one side were getting pretty ugly. In the end, they felt that the game had been stolen from them. I can say neither that I agree nor disagree. I believe the game was badly called. I believe it is within the realm of possibility that the umpires harbored some resentment against the one team, or some sort of motivation to call against them. I really did not see enough to make an informed judgment ... until someone associated with the team uploaded a video of a few bad calls to the internet.
There were a host of calls which the one team objected to. I guess I didn't pay close enough attention to really make judgments on most of these while watching the video. But one of the calls was absolutely horrendous. The issue of watching it in real time is not in any way relevant. It is not very much a matter of judgment or of positioning of the umpires. It was just a horrendous call, it was horrible. The ump who made the call had no business making any call. He demonstrated unfitness for duty - a complete lack of understanding of the rules - in making the call. It was just that bad. I defy anyone to watch the video and draft up a memo, under the rules, supporting the call. This guy was experienced though I think at this point, he should not be permitted to gain any future experience. I felt so strongly about this call that I took time out to write to the state athletic commission to have this guy's actions examined. I hope they pull his certification. I hope they prohibit him from ever calling a high school game again. And I was a disinterested party at that game.
It occurs to me that the call in question, while definitely a rally killer, really did not determine the outcome of that game. The team could have overcome it. They could have sc ored runs at other times, played a little better or smarter, or some hoe pulled this game out. They were evidently the better team. But I believe they lost that game because they allowed the ummps to take them off their game.
Conversely, I think Danielle Lawrie could have had a near meltdown, had she chosen to, given that the umps were pinching her. She's far too experienced - having been to the WCWS and Olympics before - to allow that to happen. Do you think she got mad when one of her drop curves really hit the zone and the ump called ball four? Of course she got mad. What else could she have done? But she didn't let it show and she didn't let it effect her subsequant performance.
There's a lesson in that. See if you can do anything with it.Labels: mental toughness, pitching, umpiring
 
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