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I was talking with a fellow umpire the other day, and he told me the story of how he got recruited. Basically it was “I need help, can you cover the bases while I do the plate”. And then he was hooked.
CMSUA has, since I joined 9 years ago, always kept to a 1-man system when a carded Blue was on diamond. I noted in the CMSA rulebook the other day the following:
“17.3 When an official CMSUA umpire is used, it is up to the CMSUA umpires discretion as to which team supplies the base umpire, if so required”
So, I was almost at the point of asking this rule to be removed from the rulebook.
Why don’t we use a 2nd umpire? Avoid controversy/potential bias by having an umpire by one team only?
I am willing to bet that in the lower leagues when parents umpire that there are games that the home team umpire (plate) doesn’t want or need a base umpire and does the game by themself. If there was a bias potential, then it would still exist.
So, how likely is there a possible “issue” of having a parent of a team do the bases for us? Especially if we can get to know the parents and possibly hook someone to become a carded umpire. Does this potential for controversy outweigh the need for recruitment given the aging of our membership?
Would it be too much to ask that at each game that we send only 1 umpire too that we ask the home team to supply the base umpire?? How will this be impacted if we have a mentor off-diamond present? Do we really take away from learning opportunities for 1-man of existing umpires?
I suggest that we should have a mix of pure 1-man games (for the experience and fine tuning of 1-man mechanics), and involving parent umpires to do a 2-man and potentially be a recruiting tool.
Perhaps we do 2-man for U19 and 1-man for U16.
Thoughts? Executive, please get involved in this discussion. Since we haven’t yet started the season or had category meetings, this could be implemented.
Cheers
Geoff
I haven’t use a parent umpire since my first season. I found it didn’t work
I feel like having parent base umps might be more trouble than it’s worth. But if it was added in I would say it would be better to add it for U16 and not U19. Because in my opinion the U16 ball is better and no parents come to the U19 games because they can all drive themselves.
Putting a parent umpire on with young umpires will cause more trouble than our newer umpires need. I will never understand why parents stop attending games no matter the age of their children.
Emma/Jim. I agree that for new umpires that having Parent umpires would not be an ideal mix. That being the case, do we put the new umpires in U16 (since it is better ball) or U19?.
Jim: Why didn’t it work in the past? What was your experiences?
I think if they are young new umps you don’t put them on with players older then them if you can avoid it (I didn’t feel confident doing this when I started). But if they are older I would say put them on U16B or U19.
Looks like there isn’t much appetite for this idea. I’d hate to miss out on a recruiting opportunity.
Jim: What kind of problems did you run into with Parent Umpires? How often?? Would a strong umpire correct the possible issue?? Clearly we wouldn’t do this during playoffs. But in League Play… Is it really that important? All the teams make the playoffs. 😉
Grant: I’m calling you out. This was your story. We wouldn’t have had you unless someone asked you to come onto the diamond and “fill-in”. Do you think this could work on parents in our community??
Other ideas: Perhaps we need to send out an umpire at random to U14/U12 games to “help out” and get to know some of the Parent Umpires and see if we can hook’em in..
Emma: We have always been cautious of not having young umpires in over their head. And age is a definite factor. It must have been me assigning the year you had this. I already knew you were a superstar and didn’t allow tournament games to run over 1hr 15 mins. lol. I am assuming it was later in the season when this happened??
Several years ago, I had a parent from the “visitors” offer to be my base umpire. The coach from the “home” team had no issues with this. It didn’t take very long for the base umpire to make a close call and the home team was screaming about bias. It came down to the base umpire/parent in the face of the coach and I had to toss both from the game (the language got pretty intense). After the game, the coach said that they didn’t like this parent who took over the bases and had issues with him in the past. I asked why he said it was okay for this person to ump bases with me in the first place if he felt there was going to be issues; the coach didn’t want to cause waves. So, my first and last experience having a parent coach bases.
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