Dave Yeast (born 1959) is an American baseball and football officiating administrator and former baseball umpire from 1981 to 2015. Between 1996 and 2008 Yeast was the National Coordinator of Baseball

Umpires An umpire is an official in a variety of sports and competition, responsible for enforcing the rules of the sport, including sportsmanship decisions such as ejection. The term derives from the Old French , , and , : (as evidenced in cricke ...

for the

NCAA The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates College athletics in the United States, student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, and Simon Fraser University, 1 in Canada. ...

. In 1999 he was named Umpire of the Year by the

International Baseball Federation The International Baseball Federation (IBAF) is the former international governing body of baseball. It has since been superseded by the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC), and continues to exist as the WBSC's baseball division. Betwee ...

Early life

Davis Dixon Yeast was born in 1959. He attended umpiring school in 1981. Early in his career he was involved with the National Umpire Improvement Program.

Career

Yeast served as the conference umpire coordinator for the

Missouri Valley Conference The Missouri Valley Conference (also called MVC or simply "The Valley") is the fourth-oldest collegiate List of NCAA conferences, athletic conference in the United States. The conference's members are primarily located in the Midwestern Unite ...

from 1990 to 1994, the

Metro Conference The Metropolitan Collegiate Athletic Conference, popularly known as the Metro Conference, was an NCAA Division I athletics conference, so named because its six charter members were all in urban metropolitan areas, though its later members di ...

from 1993 to 1995, and

Conference USA Conference USA (CUSA) is a collegiate athletic conference of member institutions in the Southern and Western United States. The conference participates in the NCAA's Division I in all sports. CUSA's offices are located in Dallas, Texas. Mem ...

from 1996 to 1999. He umpired 25 Division I conference tournaments and 14 NCAA Regionals. He was an umpire during the NCAA

College World Series The College World Series (CWS), officially the NCAA Men's College World Series (MCWS), is a baseball tournament held each June in Omaha, Nebraska. It is the culmination of the NCAA Division I baseball tournament—featuring 64 teams in the ...

in 1991 and 1995, and was involved with the NCAA baseball committee as it structured the officiating program for the NCAA playoff and World Series tournaments. In 2021, Yeast was the first ever umpire inducted into the

College Baseball Hall of Fame The National College Baseball Hall of Fame is an institution operated by the College Baseball Foundation serving as the central point for the study of the history of college baseball in the United States. In partnership with the Southwest Collect ...

. Internationally, Yeast worked as an umpire for the

1996 Olympic Games The 1996 Summer Olympics (officially the Games of the XXVI Olympiad, also known as Atlanta 1996 and commonly referred to as the Centennial Olympic Games) were an international multi-sport event held from July 19 to August 4, 1996, in Atlanta, ...

, the 1993 and 1999 Intercontinental Cups, and the 1990 World Championships. In 1995 he also worked as an umpire for

Major League Baseball Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball league composed of 30 teams, divided equally between the National League (baseball), National League (NL) and the American League (AL), with 29 in the United States and 1 in Canada. MLB i ...

. From 1996 to 2008 Yeast served as the National Coordinator of Baseball Umpires for the NCAA. During his term as National Coordinator, Yeast developed the NCAA’s first rules testing program for sports officials, implemented the ''NCAA Umpires Mechanics Manual'' and ''NCAA Baseball Umpire Preseason Guide'', and cofounded the NCAA Umpire Development Camps. He resigned from the NCAA position in order to return to umpiring on the field, where Yeast continued until 2015. Since 2015, he has served as Coordinator of Baseball Officiating for the

Pac-12 The Pac-12 Conference is a collegiate athletic conference in the Western United States. It participates at the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I level for all sports, and its football teams compete in the Football Bowl ...

and the Big West and Western Athletic Conferences. In 2024, Yeast became the Assistant Coordinator of Umpires for the SEC Umpire Consortium that includes the SEC,

Sun Belt The Sun Belt is a region of the United States generally considered stretching across the Southeast and Southwest. Another rough definition of the region is the area south of the Parallel 36°30′ north. Several climates can be found in the re ...

, Southland, Southern and

Ohio Valley The Ohio River () is a river in the United States. It is located at the boundary of the Midwestern and Southern United States, flowing in a southwesterly direction from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to its mouth on the Mississippi River in Cairo, ...

and

Atlantic Sun The ''Atlantic Sun'' is a local newspaper for the West Coast region of Cape Town, Western Cape The Western Cape ( ; , ) is a provinces of South Africa, province of South Africa, situated on the south-western coast of the country. It is t ...

Conferences. He worked as an Instant Replay Communicator for the

NFL The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league in the United States. Composed of 32 teams, it is divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The N ...

from 2008 thru 2015, and as an Instant Replay Official for the Pac-12 Conference from 2017-present. He was selected to work the 2018 Tax Slayer Gator Bowl. In 2022, Yeast was named Supervisor of Football Instant Replay Officials for the

Pac-12 Conference The Pac-12 Conference is a collegiate List of NCAA conferences, athletic conference in the Western United States. It participates at the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) NCAA Division I, Division I level for all sports, and its Co ...

. Yeast was selected to work as the Colloborative Replay Official for the 2021 CFP Semi-Final (Michigan vs Alabama) and National Championship Game (Georgia vs Alabama) and the CFP Semi-Final Game (Michigan vs TCU) in 2022. In 2025, Yeast was hired by the

to serve as their Instant Replay Trainer. He served as the vice president of officiating education for ArbiterSports from 2009 until 2020.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Yeast, Dave Living people Baseball umpires Year of birth missing (living people)