I appreciate all your scenarios and I believe every one happened. It pains me to see how much inferior umpiring is out there on what used to be considered a high level.
Much of what we have heard in this thread is common occurances in the lower leagues with umpires of questionable ability, but with testing and evaluation that most NFHS umpires have to go through to get the patch, I guess Im just suprized at the amount of issues.
I would be less concerned if we are talking about technical balks or obscure rules, but most of these are the everyday garden variety calls we all have every season.
I teach an Umpire class every year, and am assigned as a training umpire for the leagues I work for.....has the shortage of umpires come to such a level that these leagues are employing the incompetent? I know in my chapter that if you have shown that you are not capable of calling a game, you will not get assigned and noone will work with you.....it may sound harsh, but its the way of the jungle, you either do it right, learn and improve or your done.....
Now with that being said, I attended my first HS chapter meeting of the year this past wednesday night......and the room was looking a bit gray.....at 44, I am one of the younger umpires. Each year we get a bunch of new umpires, but the game has a way of weeding out umpires just like players...