How to Umpire a Blow Out
Posted by The Little League Coach on 05 Jun 2008 at 01:04 am | Tagged as: General
Image by GMWIV via Flickr
We have all been on both sides of this equation. How, as an umpire, do we get a game going when it is a blow out? Should we try to even things up? Stay the course? Influence the game?
The bottom line is, we should only widen the zone of the team killing the other and we should give very fair warning we are doing so.
The way I like to handle this is I pick out the obvious "leader" of the team. You can almost always tell who this is instantly. When he comes to bat, I tell them "you better be swinging", and proceed to call anything close a strike . Then I tell him as he walks back to the dugout, "tell your team to be swinging". Experienced players and managers know exactly what is going on. A good manager will simply agree and say, "you better be swinging".
Umpires should never influence the game. And the above should only be done in extreme situations such as a 20-0 game. Imposing yourself on the game is a major mistake for an umpire should be avoided at all costs. Unfortunately, this is often not the case.
Do you know any other things umpires do to impose on the game?
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I can understand why this is done (to speed up the game, ease the bleeding, etc., etc.), but isn’t the duty of the umpire/referee in any sport to be an impartial judge? Even though everyone knows what’s going on, doesn’t this conflict with this belief?
It is the absolute duty of the umpire to be impartial. See this post http://thelittleleaguecoach.com/an-umpires-viewpoint/ where I wrote about this. But, that said, there are many rules that are rarely enforced, or completely ignored. Balk rules, illegal pitches in minors leagues, leaping in softball.
Baseball has so many unwritten rules. You don’t steal when you are crushing a team, you don’t get mad when you get beaned after being caught stealing signals. You protect your batters, you run around the bases. They go on and on and on.
This is just one of the unwritten rules of the game.