First base umpire

Duties and positions

In nearly all levels of organized baseball, including the majors, an umpiring crew rotates so that each umpire in the crew works each position, including plate umpire, an equal number of games. In the earliest days of baseball, however, many senior umpires always worked the plate, with Hall of Fame umpire Bill Klem being the last umpire to do so. Klem did so for the first 16 years of his career. On the Major League level, an umpiring crew generally rotates positions clockwise each game, with an exception for doubleheaders, where the plate umpires scheduled for both games do not work the other game at first or third base. In a doubleheader, the first base umpire in the regular rotation is replaced by a fifth umpire in the first game (the regularly scheduled umpire will be the plate umpire in the second game), and the fifth umpire takes third base in the second game, to replace the umpire who was the plate umpire in the first game.