Most of the jokes and critiques you hear about umpires involve their poor eyesight behind the plate.(1) But what most people don't notice is how often umpires are in the right spot at the right time. That is because we tell the future. It's also called positioning. We spend a lot of time here talking …
Category: Umpire School
On swearing.
My friend M, who is seriously one of the best gift givers I've ever met, got me the autobiography of Pam Postema as a Going to Umpire School present.(1) Postema, for those of you who are unfamiliar with her, is the female umpire who has gotten the closest to becoming a major league umpire. She …
Adventures in Umpire School, Part 4: Fellow Students.
We have message boards for umpire school, and we've been encouraged to go on the message boards and introduce ourselves. This is what I've learned so far(1): 1. Several of them are ex-military. This makes sense, I suppose. One of my close friends is a retired Marine, and I can see how she would choose …
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Adventures in Umpire School, part 1: The Clothes
I expected there'd be some hiccups in my attendance of umpire school. There usually are, when you do something that usually only men do. But I didn't expect the first hiccup to be in the application. See, one of the questions on the application is "what size uniform do you wear?" And the answers? Are …
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Why I’m going to umpire school.
I started this blog to chronicle what happens when I go to umpire school in January, but I thought I might tell you a bit about why I'm going to umpire school. I'm definitely not going to become a major league umpire. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'd love to be a major league …
Baseball Julia 