Commentary by Charles Prince

The North Jefferson News



Alabama High School Athletic Association executive director Steve Savarese needs to look into the way the AHSAA picks their umpires for prep baseball and softball. Of all the sports the AHSAA sponsors, the officials who call games on the diamond are by far the worst of all officials.

Wrestling officials appear to the best and most consistent at making the right calls and not affecting the outcome of matches, although, I have seen two matches at state tournaments that had calls that other observers felt changed the outcome.

Football coaches probably won’t like me saying this, but football officials are one of the better groups when it comes to getting things right. In the last decade of covering prep sports, I’ve only seen two calls on the football field that affected the outcome of a game I covered.

Basketball officials don’t seem to be as good at calling the game consistently as football or wrestling officials, but one area stands alone at the high school level in having the most incompetent officiating—the diamond. Be it baseball or softball, I’ve seen dozens of bad calls in the past 10 years that altered the outcome of several games.

I once covered a Hartselle-Cullman baseball game that had the area title riding on the line. In the top of the seventh inning of this game, a Hartselle runner was called out after being caught in a rundown. While this player was in a rundown, a teammate scored to give the Tigers a lead. But after the runner was called out, the run didn’t count and Cullman won in extra innings. What was so bad about this call? The Cullman player who tagged the runner out, tagged him with his glove, while the ball was in his other hand. I was down the first base line and caught a photo of the tag with one hand and the ball in the other. Also in the photo was the umpire calling the runner out when in reality, he wasn’t.

However, the worst umpired game I’ve ever seen in my life was Monday night in Fultondale.

Three calls, all of which were incorrect, either gave Dora runs (two), or cost Fultondale runs (one).

Dora won a 7-4 game, but without the umpires blowing the calls, the game would have likely been tied at 5-all in the bottom of the sixth inning. Which team would have won the game after that point, I can’t say for sure, but at least Fultondale would have had the chance to play the game on even terms.

Does that last sentence sound familiar to you? It should, I wrote something similar to that back in May, when a blown call by the umpires allowed Springville to win a game over Mortimer Jordan, that maybe they shouldn’t have. We’ll never know due to a horrible call. That call by the way, was said to horrible, although it was in Springville’s favor, by the fathers of three Springville players.

Back to Monday night. In the second inning, a Dora player on third attempted to steal home. The throw to the plate to Fultondale catcher Haley Hill was in time. Hill put her glove down on the ground just in front of the plate and the Dora player slide right into Hill’s glove prior to her foot crossing the plate.

Somehow the runner was called safe. I guess I misunderstood the rules of the game, but I was under the impression if a runner is tagged with a glove while the ball is in it, before the runner reaches a base or the plate, the runner is out. Silly me for not being better informed.

Another bad call came in the third inning came on another play at the plate. From the first base line it was clear that Hill had tagged a Dora runner on the knee before she reached home plate standing up. However, once again the runner was called safe. The call was made by an umpire who couldn’t have possibly seen the play. When the ball was hit, and the runner from third started toward the plate, the umpire moved up the third base line about 10 or 12 feet. When the Dora runner passed him, she was between the umpire and his view of home plate. He couldn’t have seen the tag, because all he could see was the back of the Dora runner. If he had moved to his right up the first base line, he would have had a clear view of the plate and would have seen that Hill tagged the runner out before she reached the plate.

When you see plays like that, you can’t help but wonder if prep umpires in Alabama receive training on how to position themselves in order to make the right calls. If the plate umpire from Monday night ever received such training, he sure wasn’t concerned about putting his knowledge to use on the field.

Later in the game, a run was taken off the score board when a Fultondale runner was called out for interference with a fielder. The runner had stopped because the ball had hit off the pitchers foot and was rolling toward Fultondale’s Molly Brown, who had been on second base and was now heading to third base. She stopped in the base line and was run over by the Dora shortstop. Brown gathered herself and moved onto third base just after Shelbi Smith had scored. The umpire called Brown out and made Smith go back to third base.

Without those calls, the game would have been tied 5-all minutes later when Cadi “Boo” Olive singled Smith home. However, she should have been driving in Brown with the fifth Lady Wildcat run, not Smith with the fourth Fultondale run of the night.

I could go on and tell you about dozens of other bad calls I’ve seen in the last few years that altered the outcome of games, but I won’t. I’ve had my fill of bad umpiring at the high school level to the point that I’m about to vomit. The AHSAA needs to institute a systems that monitors umpires performances, to determines which umpires are getting the job done and which ones aren’t. Those that don’t measure up, should be let go.

There are several good umpires and officials in each high school sport in this state, however, there are too many bad ones for Mr. Savarese to ignore the situation and not make changes. You make the call, Mr. Savarese. Make the right call. It sure would be a refreshing change.