AlwaysImprove wrote:MTR wrote:Spazsdad wrote:It aint that way in baseball anymore. When they started coming down on the "cowboy blues" with their own zone all those shenanigans stopped.
Bull! All the softball whiners have been complaining about for years was not calling the strike zone by the book. However, they want to continually point to baseball where they haven' called a book strike zone for 50 years.
Talk about consistency
All fine. Umps have their own zone. You have this reality in softball that makes the whole thing goofy. Umps calling strikes 8 inches off the plate. Pitchers using this ultrawide strike zone to hide from batters. Batters toed completely up on the plate with 34" bat and no way to reach the pitch that is a called strike. Defensive coach barking about getting the kid off the plate. Offensive coach barking about getting the kid on the plate.
Tell me how calling that Bull is whining? It straight stupid.
There needs to be some reality about the outside edge of a reasonable strike zone. Leaving it open ended has created the comedy show we now get to watch on a regular basis.
This reminds me of the alleged Clapton fans who complained when he did his blues-only tour.Told everyone exactly what he was going to play, what he wasn't going to play, told folks if that didn't suit them, not to come. But, of course, they still bought tickets and then complained about the set list.
Umpires have been telling coaches for years what they are calling and why, but some softball people choose to ignore that pertinent information. Why? Could it be because it makes for a convenient excuse?
And even though being told this is exactly what the umpires were instructed to do, it continues to be a constant complaint. BTW, the umpires didn't make that decision, that is what they were asked to do. Yet, when an umpire calls the zone "by the book", the whine changes to squeezing the pitcher, the comments of the postage stamp strike zone, shoe box, etc.
Its a lot like the NCAA umpires being told they need to make that IP call by the book and when they did, were the coaches and pitchers blamed? Hell, no, it was the umpires who did no more than exactly what they were instructed to do.
I'm not a big fan of extremely wide zones, but I do believe the complaints are as much, if not more, an exaggeration than the strike zone of which the complaint addresses.