Will Harvey
Will Harvey
Will Harveyis a software developer and Silicon Valley entrepreneur. At the age of 15 he wrote Music Construction Setfor the Apple II, the first commercial sheet music processor for home computers. Music Construction Set was ported to other systems by its publisher, Electronic Arts. He wrote two games for the Apple IIgs: Zany Golfand The Immortal. Harvey founded two consumer virtual world Internet companies: IMVU, an instant messaging company, and There, Inc., an MMOG company...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBusinessman
CountryUnited States of America
The integrity of the game is the umpires. Nobody else. The entire integrity of the game is the umpires.
Officiating is trying to do your absolute best with what you've got.
I'll say it again: you've got to put the argument back in the game. They're trying to make baseball mechanized, a machine. They're ruining baseball.
I went into umpiring at age 16. I got into officiating because of the fact that I could not stand the referees that worked our basketball games.
I was a great base umpire, but I was the most mediocre plate umpire to ever come into the major leagues.
I set out to be the best umpire of my time. But I don't know what it takes to be great.
I must admit, I was born to officiate; I was made to officiate. I miss it. I knew why I was doing it. God made me to umpire.
Error is part of the game. I never, ever second-guessed myself on a call and don't believe good umpires ever should.
I say to you, you want a thrill, volunteer to be an umpire. I'd like you to go just work the bases some day. Just go do that. You're going to love it. Try the slow-pitch stuff. You'll love it. Ask my son - he tried it! He said, 'I've never seen so many idiots in all my life.'
When you're in between the white lines, the game face is on. I was only focused on the task at hand - out, safe, ball, strike - leaving little time to think about how special a player, moment or game happened to be.
Umpires are necessary evils. That's just the nature of the beast. For years, people have looked on umpiring as a job they could get any postman to do.
I was correct in every call I made, regardless of what managers, players or replay may have said. To me, that's the reason I'm in the Hall of Fame. If I didn't umpire with conviction, I wouldn't have made it for long.
I want you to know that I am one of the more fortunate people in life. There aren't too many of us that somebody selects and says, 'You know, that guy ought to be an umpire.' That's what happened to me.
Balls and strikes are the basic tenet to everything in baseball. From the perspective of hitting, pitching, offense and defense, it's all about the strike zone and how the battle is waged there between the pitcher and hitter.