This year I was honored to be invited to work the Little League Softball Eastern Regional in Bristol Connecticut.
Friday is arrival day at the Eastern Regional for both teams and the umpires. After checking in at the (very nice) hotel that Little League provided, the first scheduled event was a 1:00pm meeting of the umpires.
The umpiring crew for this year’s tournament are:
Dena Solen – CT
Richard “Rich” Ross – MD
Colin Donovan – CT
William “Bill” Webster – CT
Stephen “Steve” Schwartz – ME
Bethany Fogerty – RI
Paul Maroni – MA
Kevin Hunter (yours truly) – NJ
Frank Policano is the UIC for Eastern Region, and Mike “Doc” Lantiere is his assistant. Frank is a great guy and a lifelong Little Leaguer, but Doc is kind of the powerhouse of the duo. Definitely someone you want smiling at you instead of frowning. Assisting them are Alice Ruffulo and Chris Thomas – one of the latter two is assigned to each crew, and supervises the pre-game and post-game conferences.
The meeting went over the various procedures, along with a description of the ground rules. Breen Field has a number of interesting features – among them two camera boxes on either side of the stadium, press wells that extend toward the outfield from there, and camera holes in the backstop. All of this is because of the TV coverage for the boys’ Regional, which will take place next week. (The girls don’t get TV coverage.) So there’s a bit to go over in terms of live ball vs. dead ball territories, which parts of the various walls are in play versus out of play, etc.
Crews have been instructed to be dressed and ready to go 45 minutes before game time. At that point, the crew will meet in the umpire conference room in the Recreation Center to do their pre-game conference. That conference will last for half an hour – at 15 minutes before game time, we will be walked over to the field by Chris or Alice. We will wait for the grounds crew to finish grooming the field after the teams have completed infield practice. At that point, we come out and stand along the backstop while the players are introduced, then are introduced and then have the plate conference with the managers and coaches. Alice or Chris do most of the talking at that, so we don’t have to do much.
We are using four-man crews, with simplified mechanics. The plate umpire has all catches, barring unusual circumstances, although the 1B and 3B umpires have fair/foul from the bag to the pole. Essentially, the important thing is that none of the base umpires will be “going out,” which means no rotations. If there’s a ball down the line, the 1B or 3B umpires are expected to turn, rule fair/foul, and then return to the infield to pick up their base responsibilities. If there’s a tag-up or touch going on while one of those umpires is turned, the plate guy (or gal) will pick up that responsibility.
At 3:30 we actually went out to the field, along with all the managers and coaches. Doc went through all the ground rules and procedures with them while we listened. We were instructed not to ask any questions on the field – to save any we might have for when we got back into the conference room. I think the idea was to avoid conveying the impression that the umpires weren’t 100% up on everything. It wasn’t an issue – Doc was very complete, and between that and our earlier briefing, I don’t recall any followup questions by the umpires.
Something a bit unusual. Ken Holden, who for years was the main “softball guy” at Eastern Region, passed away about a year ago. (Pat Holden, the assistant director, is his son.) To honor Ken’s memory, all the umpires will be wearing a navy blue wristband with a large “KH” embroidered on it. The wristbands kind of made me do a double take, given that those are my initials, but I think it’s a great tribute.
After all of that, they had the traditional chicken barbecue dinner to kick off the tournament.
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