First Game of the Year

 Yesterday, I had the chance to work with some of my favorite people and see more of my favorite people. I worked a game in San Bernardino at Al Houghton Stadium, home of the Little League Major Division Baseball and Softball Tournaments for a kick-off weekend of a three-district tournament. How often do you get to kick-off your season at the Western Region headquarters? I've closed out two seasons there but to start it off, this was a first.

I umpired second base for the first game of the year. It was a fun game, not too bad of a score for their first game of the year. I had a couple of calls at second and thought the mechanics were sharp but I am going to be working on my timing this year.

I got to hang out with one of my mentors and best friends, David Burt, for a few games and we talked about our plans for the year. See, Dave was invited to work the Junior Softball Regional in Tucson, Arizona in July. I am working in Missoula, MT for the Senior Softball Regional. We are doing two different regional tournaments but we will be working a lot together as we prepare for our regionals as Junior Softball and Senior Softball really aren't that far away from each other. It will do us good to plan to work games together, pushing each other to get better, critique each other, and evaluate our growth. We trust each other to the point that we know if something really needs to be worked on, we are honest and kind.

I also learned that I am the only umpire from Southern California making the trek this year to Montana. The majority of the other umpires are coming from Oregon and Washington meaning I get to meet a lot of new umpires this year. That will be great. The other thing I learned is that I get to work with one of the umpires I worked with in 2017 in San Bernardino. Darryl is an amazing umpire, fit, observant, hustles like a rock star, dressed meticulously, and is top class umpire in every sense of the word. I'm so looking forward to seeing him again.

So things to work on this year to help in Montana:

1. Timing. Timing. Timing.

2. Looking sharper.

3. Included in looking sharper: Losing a few more pounds. I'm 20 pounds down from my 2020 regional weight but I want to get down some more. That's just eating right and getting my hustle on.

4. Dig through the rulebook and learn the Senior differences. I don't want to be surprised by the few differences between Senior the rest of Little League, especially the DH.

Time to start the machine up to get this season off right.