Enright3: Is addressing an umpire as “Blue” a term of derision, of respect, or just a neutral way of dealing with not knowing your name. How would you feel about “Ump”? I never heard “Blue” till earlier this summer when I wound up official scorer at my grandson’s 10-year league game. I’ve scored ball games for about 65 years, so it was no big deal. Mainly they wanted me to be accurate on pitch counts. Calling H/E was hopeless at this level.
The last time I attended a Seattle Mariners game, Dan Wilson was the catcher. At the start of each inning, Wilson and the ump appeared to share a joke or two and laugh, then each would go to work. The catcher for the Oakland A’s at the time did not seem to have the same rapport with the ump, they never said anything to each other. During the 6th or 7th inning, there was a close play at the plate and Wilson argued with the ump for a couple minutes over the call. During the bottom of the same inning, Wilson came up to bat and he and the ump had a few more words with each other. At the top of the next inning, Wilson walked out and said nothing to the ump. After the pitcher warmed up, the ump bent over and said something to Wilson that got him laughing. After the game ended, I saw Wilson, manager Lou Pinella and the ump talking in the dugout. Someone said something funny, all were enjoying a good laugh.
Old joke.
Catcher… Ump how do you spell your last name.
Ump…MORARITY
Catcher’’'Thats what I thought, only one eye
Choice 3. Sometime they don’t know what to call me. I’m surprised you haven’t heard “blue” all that often. I’d say that’s far and away to most common term. When I’m talking to a coach or player even if I know their name (which I frequently do), during the game it’s “coach”, “catch” or "catcher’, “batter”, “43” (iow player’s number). You get the idea.
I’ve been to games where The players and coaches know me by name, I have to remind them to call me “blue” or “ump” as ‘preventative umpiring.’
You should have gone after the coach on that one. Most (if not all) rules for baseball and fast pitch softball don’t list a degree of flinching required for a player getting hit by a pitch. It simply says the batter must attempt to get out of the way.
Yep. I love it when I see this as well. My oldest son started catching this year and this is one of the first things I taught him.
Catchers will also do this if the batsman that is hit is another catcher.
Holy cricket idiom, Batsman!
In this particular situation, the ball was high and tight and my batter did flinch, shrugging upward to keep the ball from hitting him in the face before turning and bailing out. It was a clear case where the batter had done exactly what he needed to do and the umpire absolutely blew the call. Believe me, I know the rule only requires the batter to attempt to get out of the way, which is why I blew a gasket on the umpire.
Sort of related… one of my favorite umpire jokes…
Pitcher throws the ball, the batter checks his swing, the umpire calls the pitch a Ball.
Catcher asks the plate umpire to go for help.
Plate Umpire (pointing to base umpire): “Did he go?”
Base Umpire (while signaling a strike) : “No!, but it caught the corner! Strike!”
Heck, I’m a football official and I still get called “blue” about 30% of the time!
I was too. I used to LOVE officiating football in the dry weather. However, I would also do youth football (rec league) on the weekends. The phrase “doesn’t know enough to get out of the rain” comes to mind. We would have youth football games stacked up on Saturdays at 8:00 AM, 10:00, Noon, 2:00 PM, 4:00, 6:00 and 8:00 PM! It didn’t matter how much it rained; as long as there was no lightning, you played ball. The only relief you got was rotating into the clock operator position; usually once per day; but two if you were lucky. Ugh, it was miserable.