Greetings MAC/NVBUA Umpires,
And once again, Blue Crew News is back and better than ever! Here’s what else is back and better than ever…the weather! I hope you have all had the pleasure of working games this week (as have I) as conditions have been really optimal for evening baseball. We’ve got another great edition lined up for you so, enough about the weather and let’s get to the umpiring.
As is our custom, association president Dave Maher bats leadoff with his popular and regularly featured president’s message. No spoilers, of course, but don’t miss Dave’s address where if you’re not careful, you just might learn how giving your time to the association can get you more in return. Read his message here.
In the two hole is our association’s rules interpreter Greg McAvoy with a piece entitled Rules Enforcement of NFHS Violations. One of the more challenging aspects of umpiring baseball are the annual rules changes. On top of that are the “interpretations” of violations of these new rules. Greg is both a student and a teacher of the “graduated approach to discipline” while umpiring baseball. Please check out Greg’s article in this edition where he applies that graduated approach once again to some of these recent rules and game management changes!
In the three spot, we have a piece submitted by an umpire of the association “from parts unknown”! (Although, I assure you brothers…this content and its contributor has been fully vetted as is our procedure here in our rookie year of Blue Crew News.) Every umpire will at times in their career have a tough game where they just weren’t their best. Resetting from a bad game is tough. As my father used to say in these kinds of life situations, “You’re having negative feedback from this situation because it’s important to you that you do well. You know you’re capable of doing more or doing better because you have done so in the past. Use that.” Our mystery written piece is entitled “Training Refresher” and serves as a really great start to reviewing some fundamentals of 2-man coverage. I really enjoyed this submission and am looking forward to future pieces on this theme so that we can all add some tools to our mental umpire tool boxes to help us reset from a variety of umpire mistakes.
Finally, batting cleanup is a really excellent selection of photos both from recent events and from the past. Once again, Blue Crew News would like to show its appreciation to brother Norm Gordon (2024 President’s Award winner) who provided some great shots of some of our members from days gone by. We’ve also got a couple of crew shots from some recent Congressional Baseball Games…a Washington, DC baseball tradition like no other! And to loop it all back, if you ever want to know about how YOU can help OUR umpire association, Norm is a guy who has done it all…both on the field and behind the scenes in his time with MAC/NVBUA. Check out Norm’s Photo Vault.
Thanks again for stopping by and checking out the latest edition of the Blue Crew News and as always, for content ideas and submissions, photo and or video submissions and letters to the editor, our inbox is open 24 hours a day at [email protected]
Best Regards,
Robert Fobian
Editor, Blue Crew News
“Ray, people will come Ray. They’ll come to Iowa for reasons they can’t even fathom. They’ll turn up your driveway not knowing for sure why they’re doing it. They’ll arrive at your door as innocent as children, longing for the past.
Of course, we won’t mind if you look around, you’ll say. It’s only $20 per person. They’ll pass over the money without even thinking about it: for it is money they have and peace they lack. And they’ll walk out to the bleachers; sit in shirtsleeves on a perfect afternoon. They’ll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines, where they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes.
And they’ll watch the game and it’ll be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick they’ll have to brush them away from their faces. People will come, Ray.
The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it’s a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good and it could be again. Oh… people will come Ray. People will most definitely come.”
– James Earl Jones “Terrence Mann” in Field Of Dreams (1989)