Day 20

3 weeks down, 2 to go. This was a very very busy week with the beginning of camp games and 5 tests in 6 days. I'll try to update you on everything, but I'm obviously going to forget some things, so I'll just fill in the blanks in later posts.

On the testing side of things, we had 5 tests this week. On 3 of them I didn't miss any and on the other two I think I missed 3 out of 100 between them. Also, on 4 out of 5 of them, my cage group (K-Zone) had the highest average score in the class. We've been at or near the top of the class as a group on almost every test. The top scoring group gets some sort of prize at the graduation banquet (something valued "Much less than $10,000" as Jim says), so I guess that's something to look forward to. We've covered almost the entire rulebook at this point, so I don't think we'll have very many more tests next week. But that just means they're going to find other things for us to do. For example, today we watched a movie about bombing raids during World War II. Also, on the topic of our classroom work, the guy who sits to my left is dyslexic, and the guy on my right has ADD. Hilarity ensues.

As I mentioned briefly earlier, camp games started Wednesday. We run two fields at a time, splitting the class half and half. Between the two games, we get 36 umpires through in each set. We've been doing two sets of games each afternoon. Next week, we might start fitting in a third set of games in the morning once we are mostly done with the classroom work. With the way the rotation has worked, along with me being the first alternate today and having to work, I got my fourth camp game in before some people had even gotten their second one. My third and fourth games were my best ones so far, as I have continued to clean up my mechanics. I do still have one big obstacle. They basically told me today that I'm very technically sound. I recognize my responsibilities, get where I need to be, and make the calls. But I'm not very big. My volume has been good. Now it's a matter of making my presence on the field bigger. They gave me some tips on that for my mechanics and posture, so I'll work on that tomorrow off by myself in a park near here.

The other part of umpiring is plate work, as in calling balls and strikes. Up until this week, we have been building a foundation for calling pitches. When we've been in the cages, we were just calling 3 strikes and 4 balls on a right handed batter, then the same for a left handed batter. Then we started working in some check swings and adjustments for a batter crowding the plate. This week, we finally started calling real pitches. It took a few times through the cages to get used to actually calling the pitches from the new stance. Pitches just don't look the same as they did from my old stance. But I've adjusted and my pitch tracking today was pretty good. Also, today we added in another way of looking at our pitch calling. All of our cage work is video taped. Today, we still got 14 pitches, but they were all to a right handed batter and there were no check swings or adjustments. We were given sheets of paper with a strike zone printed on them. After every pitch, we marked down where we thought the pitch was. Then, we'll be able to look at the video and compare it to our sheet to see how good our strike zone is. I haven't had a chance to look at my video yet, but I did feel good about my zone today. One other thing I've had to adjust to is that the way a catcher catches the pitch actually matters. I've always been taught that the strike zone is established over the plate, not where the ball is caught. After all, the batter hits the ball out over the plate, not out of the catcher's glove. But in pro ball, they apparently get all pissed off when a pitch crosses the zone over the knees but is dropping and is caught really low and you call it a strike. (I had an issue with a couple of these in my second camp game. I called them strikes, they told me to call them balls next time.) So I'll keep working on that.

Other notes:
-I've never heard the term "Legalized Hooker" so much. (In the rules, Hooker is one of the batters in the batting out of turn examples. I think they did that on purpose)
-There was frost on my car a couple times this week. I know it has been even colder up north where all of you are, but still, this is not the weather I signed on for. It did warm back up the last couple days and is supposed to stay in the upper 70s for highs for the next week or so.
-With the lack of hard field pivoting drills, my ankle and knee are feeling a lot better. I've also been wearing my taller soccer socks this week to keep a little bit of compression on the legs and knees without messing with my mobility, so that has helped too.
-When abbreviating Pinch Hitter in my notes, I found myself writing it "pH"
-I've never been around so many people that chew tobacco
-I somehow managed to inherit a car-load full of riders. They used to ride in the mornings with another guy, but he was late a couple times, so they rode with me. I think they must have hurt the other guy's feelings or something because now he doesn't drive at all, leaving me with my new crew. One of them works security for ESPN, two of them are from California, and the other one is the only girl here that's about my age. (And to head off the inevitable comments, she's from Canada, taller than me, and engaged, so there's no interest there whatsoever)
-ESPN2 is a static POS here. So much for the Australian Open.
-Circuit City is closing all its stores? What?