OK, so I'm a bit of a sports fan. I played sports when I was a kid. For that matter, I played them as an adult, until about 3 years ago when I realized that I had lost more than a step. I had a hard time giving up baseball (and softball), it was such a part of my life and watching is just not the same as playing.

Since I'm sorta on the sidelines nowadays, I get to relive my youth by watching my nephew play baseball. Now Ryan is a great fielder. In the 10 years I've watched him play I can only recall 3 errors that he has made in the field. Batting is not so strong for him, but he still manages fairly well, and is a starter on the high school team as a second baseman.

So this time of year we have what's called Fall Ball (duh it's fall). There is no score in these games except that every parent and every coach keeps score. So it's not officially scored, but trust me people pay attention to it. It's supposed to just be a sorta practice session for all the high school teams to prepare for the regular baseball season. Some of the kids don't take it serious, but for the most part the kids seem to play it like it's a scrimmage and they hustle and try their best.

Unfortunately for us there are very few good umpires at the High School level. There are even fewer good umpires in Fall Ball. In fact there has been one game that I was happy with the umpires so far in Fall Ball. I sorta figured that this was practice for the umps as well as the players. So I try not to be too critical, but I'm a big baseball fan, so it's hard not to scream at blue when he makes a bad call (blue is the umpire for you non fans).

So bring us to the game this afternoon. We are playing at our home field, and while there isn't too much of an advantage at this level for home field (since all umps suck). The advantage lies in the fact that I don't have to drive out of town to watch Ryan play. The game is pretty nip and tuck, very close most of the time.

Unfortunately for us, the umpire behind the plate is the epitome of what is wrong with high school umpires....inconsistent. The guy can't decide where the strike zone is. The kids don't seem to be getting overly upset with him, although there were a few times that I thought they were gonna argue with this blind schmuck.

I figured that since we had such a load of crapola behind the plate at ump, maybe we would make up for it with our field umpire. Usually you don't get stuck with two total morons in the same game. Well I guess today was just our lucky day. The guy in the field couldn't make the same call twice if his life depended on it, and the guy behind the plate just deserved all of the not so pleasant thoughts I was sending to him. I considered the Jedi mind trick, because I remember obi-wan saying that it worked on the feeble minded and this guy was if nothing else feeble minded. Reminded me of Tom Cullen from The Stand. If you have never seen or read The Stand, I suggest you check it out, just so you can get a better understanding of how terrible this guy was.

So we got 4 innings of bad calls, from the field and behind the plate. I noticed that the kids stopped caring all that much, but the coaches and parents (and uncles) seemed to be pretty unsettled. Thankfully, the game was called after a 2 hour time limit (the only good thing about Fall Ball). My nephew went 0 for 2 with an RBI and a walk. So I wasn't too terribly upset. I always feel bad for him if he doesn't hit well (silly since the kid is 17).

I have come to the conclusion that if all the umpires are going to be this bad, then I'm absolutely glad that it's still football season. I would rather complain about bad refs compared to bad umps.