Still, no harm done, I thought. All trainers believe that every umpire can nail the pitch that splits the plate belt high. My experience shows that the more an umpire knows about plate mechanics, the more likely he is to miss a strike. That s why I counsel umpires to call marginal pitches strikes rather than balls. For a gross error occurs when the UIC begins to squeeze the strike zone.
Every experienced umpire knows it happens and when.
For the first few innings, the umpire is loose, relaxed, fresh. He s even calling strikes three inches off the black or at the bottom of the kneecap in a high school game. Batters are swinging, and so is the ump. It s the fifth with a 1-1 score, R2 aboard, and the pitcher has two strikes on the local Hank Aaron. Just like me.