I’m a big fan of umpires. Unlike most fans, I dig their work.

Any guy that can stand behind the plate and watch 90mph fast balls come straight toward his forehead while another guy waves a hunk of metal four feet in front of him, and oh by the way, also hope this other dude crouching behind the plate catches this vapor trail projectile as he tries to decipher if that piece of hardened rubber, twine and horse hide is over this 17-inch area and not outside it… he’s got my respect.

Dave Yeast, the umpire on the right with my hair cut, shares a laugh between innings.

So when I got the chance to talk to long time umpire Dave Yeast, a pillar in the umpiring profession and former National Coordinator of umpires for the NCAA, I didn’t hesitate to put on my bubble chest protector and black wire facemask on and fired away at him.

Me:
First off, how did you get into umpiring to begin with?

Dave Yeast:
I played at Tulsa in last year of the program and just loved the game. But it all started well before that. When I was 14 or 15, I idolized this All American baseball/basketball player, Bill Moulder. And besides being a great player, Bill was an umpire as a part time gig. So whatever Bill did, I did. So I started umpiring games at that time. I’d play at 6pm, then go get changed and ump another little league game at 8pm.

Ironically, Bill’s son is Kevin Moulder, who is a coach at St. Louis U now and I worked a game of theirs not long ago. Luckily, I was working 2nd base that night . and didn’t have to make a single call.

Me:
So how did this little league umping turn into becoming a college umpire?

Dave Yeast:
I went to an umpiring school in 1981, run by Bill Kenneman. It was a six week process and had 119 guys and one woman in our class. And after six weeks you get a good feel about how good you could be and whether you’d succeed as an umpire.

So i did real good the whole time and get to the final evaluation. And I’m telling you Eric, I screwed the pooch there. Because, I’d never been in a real arguement on the field up to that point. They had staged a balk call and an umpire acting as a coach comes out and fake argues with me. I mean, he’s kicking dirt on me and calling me names and everything. But I was too nice of a guy at the time, I couldn’t kick him out. And they told me I was “too nice” to be an umpire.

I came in 18th in that class and they only took the top 15 to be umpires. I was heartbroken. I knew I had all the makings to be an umpire. The administrators told me, “You’ve got a big problem… here’s the deal, half the instructors had you ranked first in the class, but the other half had you at 35th or higher. We feel you’ve got the size and speed, but if we put you in minor league ball, you’ll get chewed up and spit out.”

So instead of going to the minors, I started working some college baseball and also got a good job with Rawlings Sporting goods. I figured that the $1000/month in minor league ball wasn’t worth it. So I decided not to go back to the camp and stayed with college umpiring part time instead.

Me:
Fast forward a little bit. How did you get the gig as the National coordinator of umpires?

Dave Yeast:
I had worked the ‘91 and ‘95 College World Series and John Bible – the first national coordinator – had me as a regional advisor. So while I was working the Olympics in 1996, John decided to step down. he was doing NFL games as well, so it just became too much so he resigned. The NCAA opened it up for applications and even though I was only 37 years old at the time, I got the job.

Me:
Why did you decide to resign and become a regular umpire again?

Dave Yeast:
Well, I had been there 10 years and just wanted to get back on the field again. I just missed it. Plus, I’ve got a 12 year old daughter and I was lucky enough to get to work the CWS and Olympics, but that all happened before she was even born, so she’s never seen her dad do something really important. I thought it would be good to see her old man work an important event.

Me:
Oooh, hopefully she doesn’t hear some of the things that people yell at you.

Dave Yeast:
We have learned to isolate her from most of that and besides, she understands what I do. We’ve had that talk before, so she’s prepared for it.

Me:
How much of the season are you on the road?

Dave Yeast:
I’m gone every weekend. I live in St. Louis, and I only have one “local” weekend at Missouri, but other than that i’m on the road. But unlike a lot of umpires, I want to work a mid-week game every week. A lot of guys won’t do that, but I think it helps me stay sharp. That’ just me. I need to stay in the games. So overall, I work about 60 games a season, which is more than just about anybody in this part of the country.

Me:
What’s the toughest call to make?

Dave Yeast:
The checked swing. Because it is so fast. It is just so fast. Most of the time you just make the call on gut instinct. It’s almost impossible to tell if the bat crossed the front edge of plate or if it went past the hip of the batter. At that speed, and if you’re standing 120 feet away, if you can honestly tell me if that’s a swing or not, I’ll give you the shirt off my back.

Me:
What is the protocol when a coach has been ejected by another umpire and wants to keep arguing? Can you guys NOT use your hands/arms to restrain the coach?

Dave Yeast:
This is something I have really stressed in doing clinics. First, if I’m the guy that does the ejection, it’s my job to turn and walk away. I can’t stand there to argue at him anymore or say something sarcastic. It doesn’t do me or the game any good. And when I turn and walk away, that’s my signal to my partners to come interject.

Now we tell our guys that are restraining the coach, if you’ve got to restrain him, put your hands out but keep them down below the waist and with the palms up. We have our guys basically “hook ‘em.” We don’t want our guys to take an aggressive stance and have their hands up high by their chest. That’s just our procedure. Look, the coach is already pissed off enough, we don’t want to cause more problems with restraining him.

I mean, you remember Milton Bradley last year (got injured while an assistant coach was restraining him)? Can you imagine if that was an umpire that caused all that?

Me:
How much chatter will an umpire put up with from a player? For instance, I saw a Florida State game on TV this year and after the third pitch of this batter’s first at-bat you could see him yell back at the umpire, “That’s bull…. that’s bull!”

Dave Yeast:
Well if a player is going to do that on his first few pitches, then we are going to have a long day. I haven’t seen anything like that before.

To me, it is so much more in the way that they ask the question. You can have a catcher that doesn’t talk all game long and then in the late innings he’ll question you with “Dave, was that down?” Or on the other hand, you can have one of those guys that come at you in the first inning with a real aggressive tone and bark out “WHERE WAS THAT?”
.

.
I tell the catchers I work with right from the start, “Call me Dave. If you have a question, ask it. No problem. Just don’t yell at me.”

I am trying to build a relationship with them because we are going to be out there for three hours, so it is in my best interest and the game’s best interest to get along with him. But if a catcher puts up too much of an attitude right off the bat or gets belligerent as the game goes along, that’s when I “divorce” him, as I call it. And I can turn into a real jerk if I get THAT kind of attitude.

The guys in my profession know that there’s a real fine line between being assertive and in control and becoming a jerk about things. if you cross that boundary, I can’t lose control of the game. I don’t put up with any bullshit after that.

Me:
But in the example I gave, it came that early in a game. How does THAT happen?

Dave Yeast:
I have no idea, but I’ll tell you this, if i miss a pitch, I’ll admit it. We’re human. But I can’t imagine a batter saying those things after the third pitch of the game. It certainly raises a red flag. In that situation the umpire there has either missed that pitch really bad or there’s some kind of history there.

Me:
How much of the crowd comments can you hear? Have you ever thought you’ve been influenced by the crowd? Would you admit to it?

Dave Yeast:
Absolutely not. At this level, you can’t do that. I mean, you hear it, especially at a game with only 100 or 200 people there. Anybody tells you they don’t hear that, they’re lying. But the higher level you get, the easier it is to umpire. The bigger the crowd, the less you hear. It’s just a dull roar and that makes it great.

But the worst thing is when you get a guy with nothing better to do than to come out to a game with 100 people there and he just rags on you from the first pitch.

Me:
But how do you decipher between what’s coming from the crowd and what is coming out of the dugout at a big game?

Dave Yeast:
It’s difficult, really. If I got a close pitch and I sense something from the dugout, I have to look over at the dugout so I can better hear them. If it’s at a big crowd, I may not hear it unless they REALLY want me to hear it.

Me:
Who has the best and worst fans for umpires?

Dave Yeast:
[This answer was asked to be 'off the record'. Sorry guys.]

But I will say this, just in general… the atmosphere at Texas A&M is the best in college baseball. If you asked me to work one last game in my life other than the College World Series, it would be the Friday night Texas at Texas A&M game. And I get that game this year too. That atmosphere is SO good for our sport. It’s an unbelievable atmosphere.

Me:
(With tongue-in-cheek) Which coaches are the biggest jerks to umpires?

Dave Yeast:
(Laughs) Let me answer it this way, some are more challenging than others. There are some coaches that let you officiate and if you mess something up, they’ll come out and address it. But there are also those coaches that officiate on every pitch and come out on every play. They are assuming you are incompetant and a cheater.

It’s a mixed bag. I mean, if i’m not in position to see a play, come out and let me know. But then there’s those coaches that insist on arguing a bang-bang play that has to be replayed 15 times by ESPN or CSTV just to decipher the call. I mean, REALLY? You’re gonna come out and argue on a play like that?

Not many coaches are going to question me, I’ve been around a long time. but some coaches want to challenge you at all times.

Me:
Do you think you’ve ever experienced a fellow umpire who has had a bias against a team?

Dave Yeast:
Honestly, I never have. Never. They are personality issues from time to time, that just happens. And a lot of times it’s from familiarity.

There’s an old coach from back in the Big 8 days where I couldn’t keep him in the games. He didn’t like me. I didn’t like him. He had something against me and wanted to challenge me every time. It was just tough. When you start seeing teams that often, things are going to happen.

And I tell ya’, everything happens so fast at this level. An umpire doesn’t have time to think to himself, “Alright, Team A is up and has a guy on second and Team B is the team I don’t like so I better make the next call go this way.” It just doesn’t happen.

Me:
Are the best umpires really chosen for Omaha, or is there some kind of seniority thing? Because it seems like the same umps are there every other year or so.

Dave Yeast:
It really is a performance-based thing. I admit, it’s completely subjective. There’s not a magic formula to make a great umpire. But it’s true that every conference submits a list to the NCAA for the CWS. And there are a number of criteria too. You have to work two conference tournaments just to be considered for regionals and four regionals just to be considered to work Omaha.

I will say with pride that during my tenure as the National Coordinator, we had 49 new umpires to get to Omaha in my 11 years. It was our goal to get two new guys every year, at least. So it probably just seems like the same guys. I mean Jim Garman has worked the College World Series seven times, but you have to remember that seven times out of 25 years of umpiring.

Me:
Okay, before I let you go, there are three things I want you to help me change about the rules of college baseball…
1- The “ghost tag” at second base on double plays.
2- The high strike needs to be called more. And
3- the worst rule in sports, not just in baseball, the dropped third strike thing.

Dave Yeast:
(Laughing) I don’t know if I can help you much with the dropped third strike. But the double-play tag at second is something we’ve addressed. The general rule of thumb is we look for the shortstop or the second baseman to be at the base and “kick it.” If he doesn’t do that, we should not call it an out. I’m not going to argue that he always is touching the base, but that’s the general rule of thumb.

The high strike hits close to home for me.The NCAA changed the strike zone to bring it up more in 1995 or ‘96. As coordinator I thought it was important to enforce it. A couple years ago, I was working the Hawaii-Hilo at TCU game and the WAC had an umpire observer at the game, I am calling the strike zone as it’s written by the rule and I’m getting crap for it from the fans, coaches and players, which is good because then I know I’m doing my job. But the observer writes in his report, “Dave Yeast is doing a good job but he’s got a high school strike zone” Again, that’s good for me, ‘coz I know I’m doing my job of calling the top end of the zone. Usually people adjust as the game goes on and quit complaining about it because you’re calling it both ways.

But we have addressed the strike zone plenty in our umpires meetings so hopefully you will see more high strikes called.

Again, I wish I could help you with that dropped third strike rule.

Me:
So do I.