- Jan 22, 2011
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I did it! Tuesday night I umpired my very first fastpitch game. HS rec level as a last-minute replacement. Went pretty smoothly as it was not high stakes, the pitchers threw a lot of strikes and the batters were willing to swing. Afterward the critiques were my zone was fairly small, but consistent, and I got the bang-bang plays right even though they went against the home team. The biggest takeaway I had was it's not easy. Calling fair/foul is pretty easy when there are chalk lines. Calling ball/strike is not as easy because you have to imagine the borders of the zone floating in space.
Congrats. My strike zone is a little small as well. I saw one video which said to consider it a strike until you something to convince you its a ball. My current though process is its a ball until I see something that convinces me its a strike.
@eddieq The head of this association goes to my Church. He kids graduated several years ago, but went to the same HS my DD is currently at. I'll have to check with my buddy, but I think he is more of a soccer ref than softball umpire.