Baseball

Last edited Mon Aug 11, 2025, 12:45 PM - Edit history (1)

Mike Winters is a retired crew chief, and a friend.
I umpire ages 8-18 years old and even had the privilege of umpiring behind the plate for D1 scrimmages.
I've taken my share of shots to the mask (I have a video of one) & couple shots to a forearm. One from a wood bat on a swing, from a player who didn't use batting gloves & no pine tar and a second from a fastball that the catcher couldn't move his mit fast enough to even slow it down.

One of the things that Winters told me was that umpires hate the K-Zone because the box is never adjusted for each batter, it remains the same for all batters. Left to right is easier because the plate never changes in width, but they get the most complaints from coaches on these pitches because they can't see the left to right (which I agree); but can see how high & low the pitches are.
And that MLB uses the K-Zones for Quality Control and requires umpires to maintain 95% accuracy.

I personally love calling Balls & Strikes, and the better the pitchers the easier it is to call (but the movement on pitches is spectacular). I did a HS tournament game with 2 really good teams, each throwing their ace. The game lasted 1 hr. 15 minutes. We entered the 7th at 65 minutes.