Editors Message

Greetings MAC/NVBUA Umpires,

For those in and around high school baseball this is indeed the start of a special time of the season. For the umpires especially…slots will be earned. Judgements will be called. Rules will be applied. Legends will emerge. War stories will be written. And when the last games are over and the champions are crowned…the umpires will leave the field and sing more mighty songs of The Brotherhood. In my short time in the association, I have come to understand that little…VERY little happens in the association by fluke or chance. All of us work when and where we work because of what we have accomplished and what our abilities permit us to achieve within the realm of umpiring.

Our global society has been going through a re-examination of our collective humanity in this first quarter of the current century and one of the great constants in that humanity is the officiating of sport and for us specifically, of course…umpiring baseball. As a veteran in the association said to me some years ago, there’s no “faking it until you make it” as an umpire. You either can, you can’t or you’re learning. You give and get a vibe to and from your partner every time you take the field and each of us knows exactly what the other’s capabilities are very quickly.

My final message to all of you on all of this is an echo of the message from our training team. For those working scholastic playoff games, congratulations! You are there because you have earned that assignment. For those not working scholastic playoff games who want to elevate to that level, consult your mentors with an open heart and mind and ask them, “What do I need to improve on to work scholastic playoff games?” They’ll tell you! They want you to succeed and ascend! The question, as Sean Connery said in “The Untouchables”, is, “What…are you…prepared to do?”

El Presidente, Dave Maher, is here in his usual spot with his regular bi-weekly address. Check out Dave’s message burning with the brightness of dare I say…a thousand points of emphasis right here.

Blue Crew News’ Special Correspondent, Gary Reals is dark for this edition as he is having the keys and levers of his precious Underwood Portable re-aligned and calibrated. We received the following urgent and mysterious message from Gary in the newsroom in the middle of the night on Saturday. It came in on the low-frequency teletype which hasn’t seen action since the Ford administration:

“Blues, your trusty BCN correspondent is busy putting the icing on the cake of our next umpire profile. This ump has cooked up an entrée for life: “If you pursue perfection, you will achieve excellence.” To say he’s in hot pursuit is intensely inadequate. Fasten your seatbelts! And tune in please on June 2nd for a study that I’m hoping you won’t find to be simply okay.” -Reals

MAC/NVBUA’s Rules Interpreter Greg McEvoy will be going on vacation shortly and that’s no blarney! Ever mindful of his schedule and responsibilities, before packing his goods and chattels, Greg put together a piece on Third Out Force-Out Scoring and Timing Plays. (Remarkably, Peter Schultheis and I had one of these plays last year in a varsity game so do not think for a moment this content is ever just theoretical or vapor-ware of any kind! You never know when a rule application highlighted by Greg might be necessary!) You can get all the nuances and granularity of it all, right here.

Finally, our Mechanics department has put together a timely and tidy overview of 3-man mechanics (with videos!) for high school baseball just in time for the aforementioned scholastic postseason. Starting positions, responsibilities, rotations, pushes and special situations…they got it all covered right here.

Before I go, “congratulations” (note the quotation marks) are in order to Brother Van Parys. Being that we are an electronic publication, we don’t really have covers of our editions but, if we did, Matt would have graced this cover. Don’t miss an exceptional action shot of MVP…doing what he does best…where else…on the plate (shocker). (Matt and his agent will be offering poster sized blow ups of this for a fee, autograph and certificate of authenticity is extra of course.) And a special Blue Crew News thank you to our freelance photographer for getting that shot and sending it in. In closing, if anyone should capture a photo of Van Parys actually working the bases for a change, that person will win a cold beverage of their choice but they have to come to Friday Night Watering Hole to claim it.

Keep those shutters shuttering, brothers! Send in those photos, cards and emails to: [email protected]! Our crack staff of top people are waiting to believe you.

Best Regards,
Robert Fobian
Editor, Blue Crew News