
← The Youth Baseball Edge Podcast with Rob Tong: Coaching | Drills | Strategy13 Jul · 23 min
YBE172: Lessons Learned As An Umpire I Never Learned As A Coach
Umpires are expected to be perfect 100% of the time. And if you make a mistake—or are perceived as having made a mistake—you get yelled at.
Who would want that kind of job?
Well, I would.
And after taking that kind of job, Rob learned five things in one year of umpiring that he never learned in twenty-one years of coaching.
Also, he answers the Question of the Week (17:17) about when to pull a struggling youth pitcher.
In this 23-minute episode, I share:
why coaches don't know the rules nearly as well as we think we do (2:32) why umpiring is much harder than it looks (10:06) the sad reality that coaches and umpires see themselves, by default, as enemies (11:50) how becoming an umpire has changed how I coach (14:57) why more coaches should be umpires (16:10)
Resources mentioned in this episode:
GamePlan practice planning app (Officially launched!)