I wasn't there but I heard about it from the dad of a couple of my pitching students. This happened at the USSSA State tournament in Rockford last weekend, 13U level.
Teams show up for their pool play games and lo and behold! No umpires. Apparently the person who was supposed to schedule them never did, and then quit the night before the tournament. The two events were probably related.
So now what do you do? On the one hand, you have a lot of teams who paid a lot of money to be there under the assumption they would have professional umpires running the games. Without that you're really cheating them. On the other hand, you have a lot of teams that paid a lot of money to be there, and to travel there. They're not going to be too happy if there are no games.
The solution the tournament directors came up with was to find volunteer umpires wherever they could - coaches they knew, people involved with the tourney - and play on. They probably first prayed for rain that day but that didn't happen.
Unfortunately, with untrained officials you ran into some problems. Ball/strike calls being one of them. My student had a tough time pitching that day. She gets a lot of movement on the ball, but untrained umpires tend to call the pitch where the catcher receives it rather than where it crosses the plate. So her walks were far higher than normal, and when she adjusted to throw straight on in she got hit.
Luckily she was laughing about it when I saw her last night, and told a couple of good stories. Apparently whoever was umping that game knelt down behind the catcher for the entire game. He also didn't have a clicker, so the counts were interesting. On one batter, she said she threw a perfect changeup on a 2-0 count, and not only was it called for a ball the umpire called ball 4. The pitcher said the umpire was relying on the scoreboard for the ball/strike count, and that was being run by a kid. The coach tried to argue it and show the book but the umpire insisted he was right.
In another instance, a batter with a 2-0 count fouled a ball back to bring the count to 2-1. He called the next pitch a ball and again awarded a walk. This time the coach argued the foul ball on the previous pitch successfully and got the call corrected.
Sounds like it was a clusterflop of epic proportions. So for those of you who complain about the umpires you're seeing, know it could be worse.
Teams show up for their pool play games and lo and behold! No umpires. Apparently the person who was supposed to schedule them never did, and then quit the night before the tournament. The two events were probably related.
So now what do you do? On the one hand, you have a lot of teams who paid a lot of money to be there under the assumption they would have professional umpires running the games. Without that you're really cheating them. On the other hand, you have a lot of teams that paid a lot of money to be there, and to travel there. They're not going to be too happy if there are no games.
The solution the tournament directors came up with was to find volunteer umpires wherever they could - coaches they knew, people involved with the tourney - and play on. They probably first prayed for rain that day but that didn't happen.
Unfortunately, with untrained officials you ran into some problems. Ball/strike calls being one of them. My student had a tough time pitching that day. She gets a lot of movement on the ball, but untrained umpires tend to call the pitch where the catcher receives it rather than where it crosses the plate. So her walks were far higher than normal, and when she adjusted to throw straight on in she got hit.
Luckily she was laughing about it when I saw her last night, and told a couple of good stories. Apparently whoever was umping that game knelt down behind the catcher for the entire game. He also didn't have a clicker, so the counts were interesting. On one batter, she said she threw a perfect changeup on a 2-0 count, and not only was it called for a ball the umpire called ball 4. The pitcher said the umpire was relying on the scoreboard for the ball/strike count, and that was being run by a kid. The coach tried to argue it and show the book but the umpire insisted he was right.
In another instance, a batter with a 2-0 count fouled a ball back to bring the count to 2-1. He called the next pitch a ball and again awarded a walk. This time the coach argued the foul ball on the previous pitch successfully and got the call corrected.
Sounds like it was a clusterflop of epic proportions. So for those of you who complain about the umpires you're seeing, know it could be worse.
