Advice From The UIC To All SRVLL Umpires
Because you are SRVLL umpires, rather than SRVLL players, more is expected of you. You are
in the post-graduate program of Little League, the advanced course in citizenship. You will face
different and more difficult challenges which, if you succeed, will provide great experience. If
you fail in the wrong ways, you can be fired. Here are some pieces of advice to help you
succeed and to keep you from being fired.
1. Read what the UIC sends to you.
If the UIC is going to the trouble to write an email to you, you should go to the trouble of reading
it. The UIC does use a mass email list, so some emails may not be relevant to you. The subject
line of the email will give you a good indication of whether you should read it. The UIC is going
to assume you read everything sent to you.
Do you know the saying, “The only stupid question is the one that isn’t asked”? That saying is
utter nonsense. People ask a lot of stupid questions. As UIC, the most common stupid question I
get asked is one that has already been answered. If you reply to an email from me to ask me a
question the answer to which is contained within my email, you’ve asked a really stupid
question. If you ask me a question that is already answered in one of the four or five most recent
emails from me in your queue, or is answered on our league website, or is answered in one of the
attachments (like this one) that have been sent to you, you’ve asked me a stupid question. Take
the time to read what the UIC sends. You may think, “I just need this one question answered, and
I’m really busy.” Guess what – the UIC is busy too. The UIC took the time to put answers to
many questions in group emails that you could have read. If you include all umpires, managers
and coaches, fellow board members, and District 57 officials, the UIC faces the possibility of
questions from hundreds of people. Good questions are welcome. Seeking clarification or
confirmation for something on which I may have been unclear is fine. “Why” questions if you
don’t understand why something is done the way it is are also just fine. However, asking
questions that have already been answered are a drain on the time of the UIC, who is a volunteer.
2. Do not miss assignments.
The No. 1 way to get yourself fired as a SRVLL umpire – miss assignments.
A missed assignment can be excusable, and an excused absence will not count against you.
Here is an example of an excused missed assignment: “I broke my leg in P.E. in school today.
Because P.E. is my last period, and because I got separated from my phone in my backpack
when they loaded me into the ambulance, I was unable to email or call anyone to try to cover for
me.”
Here are examples of statements that will not excuse your absence:
 “I forgot that I had tutoring after school and had to go to that.”
 “My sister was supposed to take me to Stone Valley and she didn’t get home in time.”
 “My [baseball/soccer/basketball/whatever] [travel/tournament] team didn’t find out when
we were playing this weekend until Friday afternoon, and our game conflicted with my
Saturday assignment.”
 “My mom wrote it down wrong.”
All of the four unacceptable excuses above were actually offered to the UIC at various points in
his tenure, and were met with disdain. Learn to manage your time. Learn that you must show up
for work if you want to keep your job.
If you find that you do have a scheduling conflict, the Arbiter settings generously let you turn
back an assignment up to seven days before. If your scheduling problem arises within a week of
the assignment, you must find your own replacement. It is not the UIC’s job to find a
replacement for you. If you contact the UIC to inform him, “I have a scheduling problem and
cannot make my game on Thursday,” you now have two problems: (1) your original scheduling
problem, and (2) the UIC doesn’t care about your problem and you’ve pissed him off.
Miss one, you are reprimanded and on probation. Miss two, you are suspended, all games you
are signed up for taken away, and you are only reinstated if you can convince me that you have
mended your ways and are now a reliable person. Miss three assignments and you are fired. No
severance package.
3. Do not ask the UIC questions about how RefPay works.
Being the SRVLL UIC means you spend a lot of time managing our Arbiter online scheduling
platform. Every new umpire must be added, and each umpire’s rankings and permissions
adjusted as they progress. The UIC must input every game into the schedule and link the games
to the correct pay scales. The UIC must input assignment changes when people replace each
other or trade assignments. Once or twice a month, the UIC must carefully go through all of the
previous games to make adjustments for any swapped assignments or (God help you) no-shows,
for umpires on a different pay scale (e.g., San Bernardino grads), and then run the payroll sheets.
Rainouts and all the rescheduling? Just shoot me. Playoffs? A lot of inputting, coordinating, and
out there yourself covering games the whole time. It takes many, many hours in the months of
March, June and September (when the schedules for Spring, Summer and Fall Ball become
available). It takes at least an hour or two every week to keep everything else rolling. The UIC is
a volunteer, is not paid to do all this, and therefore does not have his own RefPay account. So
one thing that the UIC will not do: Help you figure out how to set up your RefPay account and
make it work so that you can get paid. Questions about your pay, such as whether you got paid
the correct amount, are appropriate. Asking me how to make RefPay work are not.
As the UIC says repeatedly, being a SRVLL umpire is part of Little League’s advanced, postgraduate course in life lessons and citizenship. This is one of those lessons: Sometimes, you have
to figure it out for yourself. Your boss isn’t going to walk you through it, especially when he
knows that most of his other employees figure it out themselves without much trouble.
There are resources available other than the UIC to answer questions. The best resource is the
tech support staff at Arbiter Sports. The company is based in Utah, so they are an hour ahead,
meaning that with your school schedule you need to plan and to make time for a call to them
during business hours. The customer support folks at Arbiter are very friendly and helpful. The
UIC calls them a lot, knows most of their names by now, and always gets answers and problems
solved. If you’re stuck on figuring out RefPay, contact Arbiter Sports. Our customer number is
107924, if they ask for it. Don’t ask the UIC how to contact Arbiter Sports. Another life lesson:
figure out how to find tech support yourself.
4. Keep the UIC informed.
Based on some to the things written above, you may think the UIC doesn’t want to hear from
you. Nothing could be further from the truth. The UIC wants to know how your games are going.
The UIC wants your good rules interpretation questions based on situations that came up in your
games. The UIC wants to know where you feel you could use some help or additional training.
The UIC also wants your feedback on managers and coaches. Yes, your feedback. You are now
Little League graduate students and the professors (i.e., the SRVLL board members) want and
value what you may have to say about managers based on your better-than-front-row view.
Impressed by how quickly a manager got his team out onto the field between innings? Worked
three games now with the same team whose manager has taken the time to remember your name
and always has his players’ equipment out and ready for inspection without you having to ask?
Inspired by how positive and compassionate a coach was with a player who failed in a key
situation? Thankful for a manager who interceded with a problem parent in the stands in a
stressful situation? Please tell me about it. I want these things in the record for good managers
and coaches, so that they are supported in their goals of moving up to manage at the next level or
otherwise praised as they should be. The obverse is also important for me to hear about. Work a
game for a manager who kept challenging your calls in a way that indicated that he clearly did
not know the rules? (Example: you award first base to a player hit on the back of his hand by a
pitch, and the manager for the defensive team shouts out to you, “Hey blue, don’t you know that
the hands are part of the bat, that’s the wrong call.” For those of you who attended rules training
when the UIC covered this, you know what you are authorized to say to that manager.) A coach
who was really harsh with his players to the point of feeling abusive? A manager who yapped all
the time from the dugout about your strike zone? A particular team’s parents who seem
especially abusive? A hotly contested call that seemed to provoke bad behavior? We need to
know about the bad things, too.
(Just in case you don’t realize this, the UIC is also in contact with the managers and division
directors, and has asked for feedback from them about you. Don’t ever think that there are not
multiple eyes on your work, both for your own growth and improvement and for the betterment
of the League.)
If something controversial happens at one of your games, the UIC should hear from you first. If
you had to eject someone, or if there was a protest, it is mandatory that you inform the UIC. But
also inform the UIC if it was just a tough call that a manager clearly didn’t like. Do it when you
are done and have walked off the field after the handshakes. Email or call the UIC and give him
the rundown on what happened. The UIC should not have to chase you down to get your side of
something, whether it be an ejection, protest, or controversial call. Managers complain to me all
the time about controversial calls – at least once a week during the season and probably every
third playoff game. If I’ve already heard from you, I’m better prepared to respond, quickly and
decisively, to such complaints.
One life lesson worth learning in this context: It usually pays to get in the first word. If I hear
from you first, in a thorough, lucid, neutrally worded email, you have already convinced me that
you must be on top of things, regardless of what the problem might have been. If I hear from the
manager first, and have to ask you for your side, you may be paddling upstream. Many of the
veteran umps – and you probably know who you are – are very good about sending an email to
the UIC promptly (right after the game) that provides a detailed account of the situation and why
you made the controversial call as you did. Sometimes, you will also tell me that you are
uncertain that you made the right call and ask me for feedback. If you made the wrong call, I will
explain why, but will also know that you got it wrong in good faith, having done your best to get
it right. If you got it right, I’m already well-informed before I get the inevitable complaint from
the manager on the short end of the call. If you got the call wrong, I will apologize to the
manager but otherwise stand up for you 100%, point out why it was a tough call, that no one can
get all the calls right, and that you’re a great umpire that the league is lucky to have. If you got
the call right, I will say all the same things except for the brief apology.
5. Keep improving.
Read the rules. Even if you are a veteran, someone who the UIC has clearly anointed as one of
his favorites, keep reading the rules. The new rule books in January should be like a late
Christmas present that you open avidly to see what has changed. Pick one definition in Rule 2
every week to review. If you have some down time, crack open the green book at random to a
rule and see if you really know it. Still confused about a rule? Google it and you’ll almost
certainly find a helpful instructional video (e.g., “Little League baseball rules obstruction” will
get you all sorts of videos posted on YouTube explaining the rule).
Learn from your partners. Particularly once you earn your way to Majors games, you will often
be partnered with umpires who have been doing it for many years. Take your umpiring up a
notch, by improving your positioning and communication. Have something that you plan to work
on every game. For example, if you are the plate umpire, tell your partner, “I think I need to get
better at keeping my head still and waiting to call balls and strikes. Because of this, I think I may
not be looking for strikes on the outside corner and too quick to call some balls.” Invite your
partner to keep an eye on that for you during the game. After the game, talk to your partner. She
may tell you, “You know what, you really do need to work on keeping your head still and
patience. There were a couple of times when I was out in B or C position where you called some
Balls on pitches low and away that looked pretty good to me.” Ask your partner what she is
working on and give her some input at the end of the game.
6. Look The Part.
Obviously, be in uniform. Take care of your shirt and cap. Don’t be the guy who is always
asking me for another shirt or cap because “I lost it” or “my cat puked on it” or whatever.
Accidents happen and are no problem, but recurring accidents for the same person are a pattern.
Looking the part is so much more than being in uniform. Show up on time. Arrive late and your
partner and the managers and coaches will assume you don’t know what you’re doing or that you
are not that interested in working games. Remember: on time means 30 minutes before the
scheduled start time of the game. Looking the part also means being loud and confident. A call
that cannot be heard is not a call. A call that cannot be seen is not a call. A blind person in the
stands should know what your call was. A deaf person in the stands should know what your call
was.
7. Have Fun.
Baseball is a game, have fun umpiring. No companies will fail, no nations will be invaded, no
governments will fall, no butterfly will flap its wings in Peru to cause a typhoon in Japan, as a
result of calls that you make during a Little League game. Go out there and work games because
you love baseball and are happy to remain a part of it. Don’t umpire because “my father is
making me.”
Develop your own style. A well-called game is one in which you as the umpire are barely
noticed. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have some flair on your strike three calls. By the end of
the season, people should recognize you from the way you work a game. (Underneath the shirt,
and the cap, and the gear, they most likely won’t recognize you based on your looks.) At the
plate meeting, always be courteous, but also don’t hesitate to show your personality and flash
some enthusiasm, charm, humor, erudition or spirituality. Winning people over is part of
succeeding in life. While the game is not about you, you should be part of what makes the game
fun, and you should have fun doing it.
8. Embrace The Opportunities.
For many if not most of you, working as an umpire is your first job, as in the first thing you get
paid to do by an organization. Make the most of it. Given the demographics of SRVLL, many of
you are probably already busy whether with academics, faith, sports, music, or other community
service (umpiring is a form of community service). So it may be hard to find games that fit into
your schedule, but do what you can. You should learn something, and grow as a person, with
every day of every job you have in life. Baseball specifically has a saying: No matter how many
times you go to the ballpark, each time you go you’ll see something that you haven’t seen before.
Be enriched with each experience.
When you reach the end of the line as a SRV umpire, because you’re graduating from high
school and off to college or military service or whatever, two things: (a) the UIC will help you
on your way, and (b) it is never the end of the line, you are always welcome back.
If you’ve worked a lot of games over your teenage years and done a good job, feel free to ask the
UIC for a letter of recommendation or to serve as a reference for a new job. This is something
I’ve done in the past and will always be happy to do in the future. The UIC will also verify your
employment if needed as part of getting a job. Just one thing about that: Make sure you let the
UIC know that such an inquiry may be coming. I occasionally get emails out of left field that
look like they might be requests to verify employment but also might be spam, or data mining, or
invasions of your privacy. I don’t release information about you to third parties I don’t know
unless you ask me to do so.
If you’ve gone off to college, you are always welcome to come back and work after the semester
or quarter is done. The UIC gives scheduling priority for Summer Ball to returning college
students looking to earn some dough for school. If you’ve taken a job locally, and would like to
work some games to make more money on the side, SRVLL is glad to have you back. And when
you’ve settled down and started a family and have a son or daughter starting T-ball, coaching is
not your only volunteer opportunity. Let my future successor as UIC know that you were a
teenage stalwart umpire for the league and get out there and work some games – where you can
pass on your wisdom to young umpires who are just like you were all those years ago.
If you’ve read this far – and the UIC is assuming that all have done so – now you get to know the
secret code words – Mimir the Wise. Mimir is a figure from Norse mythology, who guarded and
drank regularly from Mimir’s Well, a source of great knowledge. Odin, the highest ranking god
of the Norse pantheon, agreed to sacrifice one of his eyes in exchange for one drink from
Mimir’s Well, and in doing so gained great knowledge. If the top boss of Norse mythology was
willing to give up an eye for knowledge, you can take the time to do a little reading. There may
come a time when you ask the UIC for something and he will ask you for the secret code word –
so you’d better have read this or have it handy if you want the UIC to respond favorably.