A few of us Colorado umpires had the privilege of working the 16U USA Baseball West Team Championships over the 2019 4th of July week. The experience of high level baseball and learning from some amazing umpires was outstanding.
Our guys worked at the Rangers and Royals Spring Training facility in Surprise, Arizona. They really took care of the umpires. We got to use a big league clubhouse as our locker room. Golf carts gave us rides to and from games. While it was plenty hot, the stand-by umpires came around to give your head a soaking with an ice towel between innings.
We were spoiled with nice lodgings in Scottsdale that had a fun happy hour after the games were done for the day. There was an intense cornhole battle and a trip to a DBacks game. Finding some good spots to eat in Phoenix was also a fun pastime. We hurt ourselves eating.
