Muddy practice
While the Dutch are surprising the baseball world in Puerto Rico and Florida, spring training is picking up pace back home. I had my first umpire assignment on Saturday, working the plate for a junioren game (ages 16-18) between Euro Stars and Bixie Baseball. It was a messy game in at least two aspects. Rain had turned the dirt circle around home plate into something of a mud pit, so my brand new plate shoes and freshly pressed pants quickly lost their clean looks. The other messy aspect was the lack of control on both sides. Hardly surprising, considering it was their first real game this year, but it did result in an awful lot of balls. I’ve never seen so many pitches hit the dirt. Of course, all this bouncing was accompanied by numerous mini-fountains of wet gravel, lavishly splashing all over the catchers, the batters and myself.
The game was a good exercise for myself in getting comfortable again with the strike zone after a five-month hiatus. I was reasonably consistent on the inside and outside corners, but the top and bottom of the zone definitely fluctuated too much. That gives me something to work on in the remaining four weeks before the season starts.
In between all the bouncing pitches and mud showers, the game also brought something I hadn’t encountered before: a runner colliding with a fielder trying to field a batted ball. With no outs and runners on second and third, the batter hit a ground ball to the short stop. As he was about to glove the ball, the runner from second ran straight into him for a clear-cut example of interference. I was pleasantly surprised by my immediately calling it, and by the lack of questions from both dugouts. Usually when something rare like this happens, you’ll have at least one manager come out wondering what just happened, but this time both of them seemed to know the rules. Let’s take that as a good sign for the upcoming season.