Baseball Umpires

Video Transcript

"BEN GRAHAM: We're going to take a look at the role of the umpires now, and we'll look at them in a general crew and then we'll at them specifically in their specific responsibilities. The umpires are often the most hated people on the field. They're responsible for calling your balls, your strikes. They're responsible telling you if the ball is fair or foul. They're responsible for calling you out or safe. A lot of times, they're the subject of a lot of ridicule and a lot of pressure on the field, but they've got some very important jobs to do. On a Major League Baseball level, generally, there will be an outfielder at every base. There will be one at the plate, one at first, one at second, and one at third, and then there will be two in the outfield in the playoffs and the World Series or in certain games when they decide to expand to a six-member crew. So you have infield umpires and outfield umpires, each one has various responsibilities, and we'll talk about those as the segments continue. But looking at the general responsibilities, the umpire, again, is to call balls and strikes, to call fair or foul, to call safe or out and also to dictate the pace of the game, to break up meetings on the mound if the coach has come out to do a mound visit or if a batter is taking too long to come to the batter's box. The umpire has to control the pace of the game. So we'll look at their responsibilities as we continue."