The Women's World Softball Championship starts tomorrow. The games are being played in Japan so you may have to schedule your watching/listening to the games. You can follow them for free on the WBSC You Tube page at www.youtube.com/wbsc

Check our website and Facebook pages often for information about camps and clinics for your athlete.  Additionally we will regularly put training videos and clips on the Facebook site.

NGSL Important Dates

Watch here for information about registration dates and other future events

All dates subject to change.

Possibility of playoffs for upper divisions depends on number of teams and interleague agreements.

Season completed - Closed to NGSL practices and games

Check back often to see the updates.  We will try to have new softball information often.

The umpire is the person charged with officiating the game, including beginning and ending the game, enforcing the rules of the game and the grounds, making judgment calls on plays, and handling the disciplinary actions. The term is often shortened to the colloquial form ump. They are also sometimes addressed as blue at lower levels due to the common color of the uniform worn by umpires. In professional baseball, the term "blue" is seldom used by players or managers, who instead call the umpire by name. Although games were often officiated by a sole umpire in the formative years of the sport, since the turn of the 20th century, officiating has been commonly divided among several umpires, who form the umpiring crew.

Umpires are often referred as "Blue" because of the color of their uniforms. In the early days of baseball, umpire uniforms resembled suits (usually to keep them inconspicuous when in public) with the only difference being National League umpires wore an inside chest protector while American League umpires wore an outside (or "balloon") protector when calling balls and strikes.

In the 1960s, umpires were allowed to wear dress shirts that were light blue, and the American League umpires wore grey slacks with their blue coats, while National League umpires wore all blue coats and slacks. In 1970, the National League added a large patch on their coat and uniform with the league logo and a number on their left sleeve, along with a short-sleeved light blue shirt for hot summer games. The American League followed suit with the short sleeves in 1972, then in 1973 they wore a maroon blazer along with blue pants until 1979. In 1975, the American League umpire hats included the abbreviation "AL" (previous to that they included a shield for the AL). To celebrate the National League's 100th anniversary in 1976, the umpire blazers/light blue shirts included the league's centennial patch and the hats were designed in the "pillbox" style with the year "'76" included on them. In 1977, the use of the outside (balloon) protector was outlawed for new umpires but grandfathered for existing umpires, with the last umpire that used the outside protector, Jerry Neudecker, retiring in 1985. The use of ties with the blazers were gradually phased out; the last time they were worn in the World Series was in 1975 and overall was in the 1979 Major League Baseball All-Star Game by George Maloney, Terry Cooney, and Nick Bremigan. In World Series games starting in 1976, the umpires wore sweaters (light blue for National League umpires and off-white for American League umpires) instead of ties.

In 1980, Major League Baseball mandated that the umpires' uniforms be standardized, and they went to the American League pre-1973 style of blue blazers, grey slacks, and short sleeved light blue shirts; the American League began adding numbers to their umpire uniforms, with "AL" on their caps and National League umpires had "NL" on their caps. This style was pretty much the same (except for the use of windbreakers and sweaters later in the 1980s) through 1995. The league initials on the caps changed towards the late 1980s when the "N" and "L" were combined into a single letter, while the "A" and the "L" were interlocked.

In 1996, the button-down light blue shirt was replaced with a navy blue polo shirt with red and white trim on the collar and sleeve cuffs. The numbers were changed to red on the shirts, an "N" with the National League logo and an "A" with the American League logo on the hats. The American League used an optional red short-sleeved shirt (possibly a homage to the 1973-79 red blazers) that wasn't used by many umpires (the notable exceptions were Derryl Cousing and Dale Scott, who frequently wore the red shirts while working home plate, even as their colleagues on the bases wore navy blue shirts). The National League added a light blue shirt in 1997, which became much more popular than the red shirts in the AL.

Beginning in 2000, after the individual leagues' umpires were consolidated into a single staff, the 1996-99 uniform styles were carried over with "MLB" on the caps instead of the league designations. Since 2001, the uniforms switched to black blazers/windbreakers with grey slacks, with the hats now including the MLB logo (along with the short-sleeved light blue shirts), which remain relatively unchanged. The navy blue shirt was phased out in favor of black, and the light blue shirt was reintroduced after a brief experiment with gray. For the 2017 season, the umpires' jacket is black with light blue trim over the shoulders.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umpire_(baseball)

Newark Girls Softball League (NGSL) is a recreational softball league, based in Newark CA, there are no tryouts and no experience is necessary. The 2018 season will be our 46th Season (1972–2001 we were known as Newark Bobby Sox) of providing a safe and fun environment for girls of the Tri-Cities area to learn and play softball. Our league provides softball teams, practices and games to girls from age 4½ to 16 and every girl plays at least two innings a game.