President's Message

Greetings my fellow umpires,

It’s the bottom of the 5th inning in a championship game. The visitors are ahead 3-2. The home team has a runner on first with one out. A lefty is at bat with a 2-2 count. The pitch comes in, and it’s a long fly ball to deep right field. U1 goes out on the ball to make the call on the trouble ball.

“Foul”!

The count stays at 2-2.

The home team coach rushes onto the field, “This is a big game; you have to get help.” U1 is calm. He answers the coach back, agrees to get help, asks him to go back to his dugout, and brings the crew together. “Guys, I had the ball foul – did anyone else have something different?” The plate umpire says he had it foul as well. U2 and U3 both say they didn’t have the angle. The call is confirmed. The coach goes nuts (but that’s another story). A tight, tense game continues into the 8th inning, and the crew gets off the field to congratulatory remarks from fellow umpires who were watching.

Today the message is about teamwork, but in a different way. On the field, most of the time you’ll have one partner. For some playoff games, you’ll have two or more partners. Pre-game discussions and in-game communications with your partners are absolutely essential to getting things like coverages and rules right. This umpire association is a team just like the crews we put on the field every day. Teams on and off the field need people who are ready to step up and help.

The umpire association relies on a whole host of trainers, evaluators, mentors, and others to help train new umpires in their journey. We need people willing to step into leadership positions within the association. One of our umpire association’s great strengths is that so many people have volunteered to help. We’ve learned that many people are giving their time and are now stretched in too many directions. If we lose people like that, we risk creating holes that are hard to fill. Committees are crucial to the association, along with other positions that could use your help and, frankly, some variety in who participates. A few examples are below:

• Trainers – We need people who can step into our training program and relieve some of the folks who have been doing the training for years. To do that, we need people who go to camp and learn how to instruct the right way.
• Raters – I’m not talking about doing an Arbiter evaluation. I mean being able to do an in-depth evaluation of an official, probably using video.
• Mentors – Probably the biggest need, because it requires some one-on-one time with new officials. “How does Arbiter work?” “Did I get that call right?” and “Why was the coach yelling at me?” are common questions new umpires have, and an umpire’s personal mentor is best positioned to answer them.

As I have said previously, the most perilous time in a young official’s life is the first year or so. This is the time we need help!

Finally, although by the time you read this, the elections will already be underway, please note that NVBUA is always looking for people to grow into leadership positions related to serving on the board. Most interested folks start as board members at large. In this capacity, folks do ‘whatever needs to be done’. For example, Robert Fobian takes on Blue Crew News, Ron Adamczyk handles our uniforms and equipment, Paul Porto does training in Northern Virginia and oversees the overall training department, and Anthony Hemmans does training in Maryland. Training includes coordinating facilities in Maryland and Virginia.

We need folks to organize our annual banquet, and we could always use help distributing rule books in the spring. We have a three-member Standards Committee that is elected annually, although we are introducing an amendment that will create a three-year term for those positions.

We’ve made so much progress over the last couple of years in pushing the association forward, but there’s still a lot more work to do, and we need your help! If you’re interested in doing something incredibly rewarding for the game and the association, please reach out to any board member!

I hope you continue to have a great fall season; it’s the best time to work on what you need to improve before spring!

Dave Maher, President, NVBUA