00:00I've been doing this for over 25 years.
00:01Started off with doing little leagues, felt like I loved doing it.
00:05So I continued, went into the high school ranks, started umpiring in the high school.
00:10Then that followed me into going to baseball camps and going into college.
00:14And then in the colleges, you get noticed and you move up a little bit.
00:18And then obviously I started to do some Atlantic League games,
00:20which was a tremendous help for me.
00:23It really put me at a different level with umpiring because I learned so
00:26much doing that as well as going to the camps because you just get the experience
00:31that nobody else gets.
00:32But working with high level players and coaches and everything about it was just a great experience.
00:37And after that, like I said, I got into it so much that we started our own organization,
00:42elite sports officials.
00:43And we're interested in helping young umpires to be better,
00:48teach them the game the right way and hopefully get them involved because there's
00:51a shortage of umpires in the nation and everywhere, not just here in Long Island.
00:55Umpires, so there's a lot of scrimmages going on in the middle school.
00:59When you get up to JV, there's one umpire only.
01:01So it's hurting the kids with development because they're not really getting a real
01:05game experience at that point.
01:07You know, and the same thing with the umpire, we have one umpire out there.
01:10It's funny because we say this all the time, a lot of the parents get upset with the umpires,
01:15but there's one guy out there trying to do a job of two sometimes and it's hard to see.
01:19So we get, again, doing this for the kids.
01:21It's great for them and the parents to see, hey, this is not easy to do.
01:26Maybe if they, if everybody would get into some kind of umpiring class or to see where this is,
01:31what they do and how hard it is to get the calls right.
01:34Sometimes they would be like, all right, maybe we should back off this guy a little bit.
01:37The program here, how many kids are enrolled?
01:40We had 35 kids enrolled in this program right now.
01:44It's a great start for us.
01:45That's what we're trying to strive to do here with the umps care.
01:49We're trying to get more people involved and 35 in this district is great.
01:53Now, hopefully we can go to each district and get more and more umpires,
01:56kids that want to get involved with doing this.
01:59So that's one of the basic things you do at any camp to do the correct way to go to
02:03get it out,
02:04the correct way to do a safe call, um, and them being still.
02:09That's all things with getting your head straight.
02:11We teach them right from the beginning the basics of what we're trying to do.
02:15Then we go into other uh aspects of it.
02:18We're teaching them on the bases, uh, the proper way to pivot when you come into the bases.
02:23Um, how to look for the ball, how to get out of the way for the baseball from getting,
02:27you know, get hit when the ball's coming in.
02:29Um, and then we also had a station that we do the uh, balls and strikes.
02:33We're teaching the guys to, again, being still,
02:37concentrate on seeing the ball come all the way through.
02:39Um, and just getting the basic mechanics for the out calls,
02:42uh, you know, strike calls, I should say, sorry, strikes and balls.
02:46You know, it's a cadence that we try to teach.
02:48It's supposed to be the same way if you're gonna call a strike or a ball.
02:51So it's just, again, just breaking down very basic stuff for these kids
02:55so they can start somewhere.
02:56And then there's more advanced stuff as you get, you know, as we start going.
03:01Getting them to be very confident is half the battle.
03:04If you can look confident out there, you're gonna get less stuff from parents or players,
03:09because it looks like you're, you know, you know what you're doing out there.
03:12But if you look like you're unsure, that's when you start to get a lot more problems out there.
03:16And that goes all the way up to every level of umpiring.
03:18Have any of you experienced, whether you're playing or umping,
03:22any parents who may have taken things a little bit too far?
03:26Yeah, of course, you know, parents yelling at the umpires happens almost every game.
03:29Sometimes you get extreme to like saying, meet me in the parking lot, which, you know.
03:33You've seen that happen?
03:34Yeah, I've seen that.
03:35Multiple times.
03:36Like, parents take it too far sometimes.
03:38But, you know, umps, you know, they learn how to take that in and, you know, what to do when
03:42that happens.
03:43Parents, sometimes parents are crazy, you know.
03:46Yeah, and like they said, they're making new rules.
03:48So, like, try to limit that as much as possible.
03:50Just like, so that's not happening.
03:51They're passing laws and if someone gets kicked out, they have to like go through a whole course
03:54to get reinstated to watch their kids play.
03:57So, that'll hopefully deter some of, like, the beat and comments and stuff.
04:01The parents can be rough sometimes, but you can learn on the course how to,
04:08how to deal with that and de-escalate.
04:10Now, when you watch, like, pro baseball, do you have, like, a kind of a more profound respect
04:14for what the umpires do?
04:16Unresolved.
04:17It adds, it adds a new perspective to when you're watching it.
04:20It's kind of opened, like, another level of seeing baseball.
04:22Like, I'm a pretty big baseball fan.
04:24I watch a lot of these games and, like, just seeing, like, the added layers and how many
04:28aspects of the game that I'm thinking about, it's kind of amazing to see.
04:32We'll watch YouTube videos and, like, how they handle it and just, like,
04:35they know exactly the rule, like, as soon as it happens.
04:38It's just, like, really interesting to see, like, how something as simple as, like,
04:43them making a call on TV, like, they have to think so much about it.
04:46Do you think when a parent sees someone their child's age behind the plate versus a grown
04:51man, they might be a little bit softer and sympathetic?
04:54That's the hope.
04:55The hope is that they will see it through our, like we were saying through our eyes now,
04:59having their son do it, having someone younger do it and say, ah,
05:03this guy is trying and he's learning and maybe they can see that, hey,
05:07maybe I'm too hard on an umpire or referee or whatever it is at this point.
05:13Thanks.
05:14Yeah.
05:14You are more socially.
05:17It'sâŠ
05:18Yeah.
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