Baseball umpire: a calling and a necessity for the sport
The FFBS has 927 active baseball umpires who can officiate across all departmental, regional, and national championships in French baseball.
In 2023, new officials joined their ranks, with 19 new graduates qualified to oversee Baseball 5 matches, a discipline on the rise within the federation.
But how and why does one become a baseball umpire in today’s French sports landscape?
To participate in various championships, our clubs, spread across the entire territory, have a number of licensed umpires. These licensed individuals are essential to validate matches.
To become an umpire, one must have several skills: knowledge of the rules, mastery of gestures, and the art of movement to better judge through the mechanics of officiating.
To master the art of umpiring, one must go through and validate several training levels, requiring constant self-assessment to grow in the ability to make calls and make the best possible decisions to minimize the margin of error.
The path is fraught with challenges, but it is so beautiful to traverse when you want to evolve and rise in the field of umpiring. It begins either with a club’s request or a personal initiative that first leads to understanding the rules of the sport, validated by the UC Rules, the first prerequisite to access the Federal Umpire 1st Level training, certified by a diploma common to both baseball and softball. With certification in hand, you find yourself directing your first matches to cover your association’s needs and begin to understand the role of the field official you become.
This is when the passion is born and the desire to be present on the field grows (after all, you are the only one who can claim that a baseball game is nine innings!).
The desire to grow, to learn, to become better is exponential, and you find yourself officiating at regional and then national events, whether for directing youth or senior matches. You must climb the ranks to understand the second-level diploma (AF2B for Federal Umpire Level 2) and then, with time, the third level (AF3B) to become a national-level umpire who can officiate in Division 2 and then Division 1: the Holy Grail, one might think! No, there will still be steps to climb to be assigned to a French Series: the Holy Grail! The Holy Grail is not yet there, it is even higher, more complex: the international level! Certainly, it is reserved for a few, but reaching it and, above all, staying there must be a permanent personal challenge.
Of course, you will be compensated for your art based on the matches you will be called upon to direct (from €30/match in departmental or regional championships, you will be reimbursed €50/match in D1). You will have to travel many kilometers across your departments, regions, or country, which will be reimbursed according to the applicable rates. Of course, you will be called upon to commit to the benefit of national-level clubs so that they can register in their respective championships based on the diploma held.
Of course, you will respond to an ethics and deontology defined in 10 points by the French Association of the Arbitral and Multisports Body, responding to impartiality, recognized and maintained knowledge through training, mental and physical preparation, exemplary conduct, and a few other identifiable points.
But the main thing is that you will be an umpire and can proudly proclaim: “No Umpire, No Game”
Ludovic Meillier, President of the CNAB
