Who wants to be a Major League Baseball umpire? Plenty do. : NPR

The participants of the MLB referees camp in July in Milwaukee began their day to practice the right technique for the most common calls of an referee: strike, ball, security and exterior.

Becky Sullivan / NPR

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Becky Sullivan / NPR

Milwaukee – To baseball referees, timing is important.

As the registration opened at 8 am, more than 100 professional budding referees had already arrived at the Milwaukee Brewers Ballpark for the referees of a day of the Major Baseball League.

These camps are, for a few lucky, the first step towards a career as an MLB arbitrator. A handful will be invited to a one-month development program in January, perhaps followed by a job in the minor leagues, then, hopefully, a major plum league job.

At a time when technology has encroached all aspects of refereeing – rereading review, videos of low -daily bankruptcy of bad calls becoming viral, and now, the MLB automated ball stroke system which calculates the location from a height to a thumb fraction – the pressure on the referees is higher than ever, according to MLB officials.

However, none of this has discouraged hopes. Instead, Milwaukee’s candidates said they adopted technological progress as tools to help their search for the objective of each referee: get all correct calls.

“You don’t want to be on the big screen and be highlighted by making mistakes,” said Reginald Davis, 45, from Racine, Wisconsin. “You make sure to practice your job. You study every day. You watch videos to improve. This is the most important thing.”

Most participants in Milwaukee were in the hope of winning a coveted invitation to the referees’ development program All MLB costs in January. Six current MLB referees began their career in an MLB referee, according to the League.

Becky Sullivan / NPR

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A day at the referees camp

The hopes in this camp has directed the demographic range: especially – but not all – men, all ages, skin colors, natal cities and experience levels. Teaching them was a team of MLB referee with more than 300 years of professional experience with each other, including 16 World Series.

More than three hours on a Sunday morning in July, the instructors organized a series of exercises on the basics of the referee. They practiced how to hold their fists while they called a striker. They practiced their marble position. They practiced leg game and positioning for a handful of game scenarios, with a local baseball team for young standing as a field.

Even crouching behind the marble recipient came with a series of details to master the students. Expand your position, the referee instructor MLB Kevin O’Connor led one. Square your shoulders on the ground, he said another. Follow the ball longer, he told a third. “Timing! Slow it up,” he told another.

All advice had practical concerns behind them – keeping your outdoor elbow returned, for example, will protect you from making you hit by land. But more than anything, said O’Connor, getting little things can help a referee project what he called “presence on the ground”.

“You must seem to know what you are doing,” said O’Connor to them. “These two canoes, you must prove to them that you know what you are doing.”

Participants in the referees’ camp awaits their turn for an exercise to practice positioning and pivots as a first base referee when a ball is struck on the right field.

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How technology changes arbitration

Facing the pressure has always been part of an arbitrator’s work. Complaints to the referees of players and managers who do not agree with an appeal are as old as arbitration itself. And in 2008, MLB began to use the proofreading exam to reverse certain calls.

In the modern era, technological progress has enabled everyone to be criticism. For fans and commentators, the striking area superimposed on a television program allows them to see, apparently objectively, whether in or outside the striking area. Now, after each match, Dashboards of referees And Bad call videos Traveling on social networks to thousands of people.

“The arission is now better than ever of a mile,” said Jim Reynolds, an MLB referee supervisor who has worked major leagues for 24 years, including two World Series. “But everyone’s expectations have now increased, raised and raised and crossed the roof. And that has put our guys in a really, really mentally difficult situation.”

“To assume that these missed calls do not add up and do not weigh on the psyche of our referees are not correct. Our guys care a lot,” he added.

Now what could be the biggest change for the referees of the major league is on the bridge: MLB is testing a system based on a camera known as ABS, or the automated ball strike, which can say instantly if a pitch is in the striking area.

The act of squatting behind the recipient is not a simple task. The feet, arms, chest and head of a referee must all be in specific positions, said the instructors, and their eyes must follow the ground in the receiver’s glove before getting up to make a call.

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An ABS Défi system could arrive in the big leagues before a long time, in which players will be able to challenge bullets and strikes when they disagree with the referee’s call. When this happens, an animation showing exactly where the ball has crossed the area appears on the big screen so that everyone can see it.

“When you walk on a big league field – I don’t care that you are a player, a referee or a coach – confidence is the most important thing. One of the things we are going to have to watch with our guys, and one of the things they will have to overcome, is this eroding of confidence in real time,” said Reynolds.

He has already changed the MLB referees’ development process, said Cris Jones, which oversees Triple-A referees, the highest level of minor leagues, where ABS has been testing for several years.

Sometimes the calls are overturned because the ball cut the area by measures as small as a tenth inch. “I thought I would be good enough if I put it back right away during the day. But they must be accurate,” said Jones.

Now Jones and other referee supervisors have a new attribute to assess to decide whether a minor league referee is ready for a promotion in major leagues.

The referees must already see the land with precision, move well and manage managers and players. Now, they must also recover from the reversal of their calls – in particular with the ABS challenge system, where there can sometimes be 10 or more challenges in a single game, because the teams can contest as many calls as they wish as long as they succeed in overthrowing the referee’s calls.

“If they have a reversal at the start of the match, it is sometimes snowballs,” said Jones. “The mental part is what I am afraid of with some of these referees which are overthrown and the frequency that they are overthrown, or the frequency that they are challenged.”

During spring training earlier this year, players described at NPR what it was when it happened. One said “humiliating” for the referee, another said “clumsy”.

Although anxiety has always been an element of the experience of a referee, “now technology has increased tenfold,” said Jones.

Cris Jones, on the right, gives advice to a referee during the camp. Jones oversees triple-a referees, the highest level of minor leagues.

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Kiss

None of this has dissuaded those who came to Milwaukee looking for a career as an arbitrator with MLB. “I think it makes us want to be perfect. But I also think that the objective of this profession is to be perfect, so we should want to be perfect anyway,” said Leo Dlatt, 21, who came from the Chicago region to attend the camp.

Stephen Proudfit, 48, of Big Rapids, Michigan, said that he did not think that ABS would decrease the role of referees. “It will just be another tool for us to make the game correct. That’s all we want to do,” he said. “No referee really cares about who wins the World Series. We just care that it is a good clean game.”

The errors are inevitable, added Proudfit. He referred to this year’s all-star game, during which the ABS challenge system was in force and was used in the first round To transform a 1-2 ball into a 0-3 withdrawal.

“One of the stars officials made a mistake. I mean, they are literally the best of the best,” said Proudfit. “But we are in a match where errors occur. You have reached 0.300, fail 70% of the time, and you are in the fame of fame. This is the game we play.”