How many umpires are there in baseball

Umpires are responsible for enforcing on-field rules and rendering decisions on judgment calls such as: Whether a batter or baserunner is safe or out, and whether a pitched baseball is a strike or a ball. A regular-season contest will have four umpires: one behind home plate and one stationed near each of the other three bases. Each umpire makes "out" or "safe" decisions at his designated base, and the home-plate umpire is responsible for calling balls and strikes on each pitch that is thrown.

The first-base umpire determines whether batted balls were hit into fair or foul territory down the right-field line past the first-base bag, with the third-base umpire doing the same on balls hit down the left-field line beyond the third-base bag.

You can even purchase the official home-plate brush by Franklin. Each MLB team has its own collection of retired numbers, and so do the umpires. Sort of.

The No. However, that's more of a gesture to recognize their contributions to baseball since those and all other retired numbers are still used by today's MLB umpires.

Share share-square The crews. Counting the squats. Road to The Show. You might be wondering: How do you become a baseball umpire? Here's an overview. The boss of the baseballs. A peculiar mannerism. Tools of the trade. At lower levels, games can be umpired by three, two or even one official; in fact, in the early days of professional baseball, the one-umpire system was most common.

Umpires are not restricted to making calls at their respective bases, although one umpire usually defers to his colleague closest to the base.

For example, all umpires can call a balk , as it may only be visible from one particular angle of view, or an ejection , since only one umpire may have overheard offending words or seen an offending gesture. On complex plays, umpires will often move to cover a different base and can end up making a call there, much like a player on defense will cover a base that is not usually his responsibility.

It may happen that two umpires make conflicting rulings on the same play, in which case all the umpires will confer to make a joint decision.

It is very rare that one umpire will overrule his colleague, and again this is usually after a short conference among all members of a crew. In Major League baseball, Umpires work in four-man crews headed by a crew chief.

Until the s , they would work the whole season without taking a break. The Umpires' union staged a series of strikes beginning in the late s that improved their working conditions, including giving each umpire paid vacations during the season, and bringing their salaries up to more respectable levels.

Like players, umpires come up through the minor leagues after attending an umpiring school, or working college or amateur games.

They start at the lowest levels - Rookie-level or short-season class A - and work their way up to AAA and eventually the majors. Promotions are supposed to be based on merit, and if an umpire fails to move up to the next level within a specified number of years, he or she is dismissed. It is therefore a very competitive process to reach the Major Leagues, although, once there, umpires tend to stay until they retire or are forced out for off-the-field problems. It is now exceedingly rare for former players to become umpires, although this was quite common until the s or s.

Umpires are usually dressed in uniforms in which the colors blue or black predominate, thus they are often known as either the Men in Blue or the Men in Black , although they have worn other types of clothing at different times in the past. The home plate umpire wears a mask similar to a catcher's mask , as well as a chest protector , now worn inside the shirt. In the American League until the s , the home plate umpire used to wear a large "balloon-type" chest protector outside his uniform; this meant that his position behind the plate was different than that of National League umpires, who wore the inside chest protector.

It was argued that as a result of this difference of equipment, AL Umpires called a higher strike zone than their NL brethren.