Umpiring

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In light of the criticism of the World Series umpiring, I just wanted to ask you all, have you ever tried it? It is the weirdest thing. A few years ago, a needed a part-time job so I looked into being an umpire (it pays well, of course because nobody wants to do it).In the late 1990's-early 2000's in Columbus, Ohio, they couldn't pay people enough to umpire the most competitive rec leagues. In my opinion, mostly because 'roid rage was prevelant at that time(yes, even in rec leagues). Anyway, so now I'm an umpire. Or WAS an umpire. A little background about myself, I consider myself a very honest person, with some integrity, and who grew up believing all sports (especially baseball were sacred). So I took the field as an ump trying 100% to do the best, fairest job possible. Then reality set in. Now they train you not to have 'rabbit years', to not let players, coaches and fans' commnets persuade your decisions.....yeah right. The point I'm trying to make is that I started out being true to myself,but then surprised myself with how bad I became. When you think you are doing a good, fair job and people start bitching or complaining just to bitch and complain, I think it's human nature to say 'OK, you want to complain about the strike zone, bitch, I give you something to really complain about.' This has to happen in every sport, even at the highest level. So when it appears that an umpire is inconsistent and favoring one team, chances are good that it is directly related against the team giving him the most shit. Of course, we can't see or hear this on TV unless the cameras pick it up. When that one ump, I think it was either game 4 or 5 got pissed at TB's bench and they started laughing at him, I knew the Rays were in big trouble. So my question to you all is: did you ever umpire? How did you handle people just trying to piss you off? I haven't umpired in like 3 years now,and if they are other ways to put food on the table, I won't do it again, but I look at umpiring differently since trying to do it myself.
 

We didn't lose the game; we just ran out of time
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Aug 9, 2006
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You make valid points and your right.

A few years back i was a Sports Counselor at a summer camp and i did such a poor job reffing a Basketball game between 8 year olds that they REPLAYED the entire game because both teams complained the ref sucked (even the winning team)

I was scared to call anything because 8 year olds travel every single damn play, thats as tough a thing as anything i will ever have to do
 

FreeRyanFerguson.com
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Sep 21, 2004
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Professionals are not affected by that stuff. Shit happens, you have ejections, you don't take it personally, and you come back the next day as if nothing happened. Chirping is just part of baseball. Once you've done it for awhile, you realize that people are going to bitch sometimes, and they are usually wrong. This umpire didn't have it out for TB, he just sucked this night.
 

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