Quote:
Originally posted by jicecone
When I was UIC of a LL, which I am assuming is what we are talking about here , and I heard of a situation like this I would call the umpire up after the game and ask what happen. Most of the time it was a totally different story from what the coach complained about.
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For years as an assignor, I found this to be the case. The version of events that I got from coaches and fans bore no resemblence to what the umpires reported. I would bet that Chris's boss has a totally different version of what happened than what the umpires reported back to their assignor. The umpires' version could have been something along the following lines:
The BU did not see the play or was very unsure about the call. He would blame this on someone stepping in front of him at the last minute. (He will rarely say that he was in the wrong place.) He may have signaled or asked the PU to change the call. The PU, having clearly seen the play, obliged his partner's request. Rather than being angry at his partner, the BU is happy that the PU saved him from a bad call.
Over on the paid part of this site, Rich Ives tells a story about a totally incompetent umpire that umpired one of the games that he coached. I would bet that what really happened bears little resemblence to Rich's story.
I have had the fortunate opportunity to have witnessed several of these s$$$houses as a neutral bystander evaluating umpires and then received the irate calls from coaches and parents the next day. While the umpires' version of events may have left out key points, the coach's/parent's version of events bore almost no resemblence to reality.
If I could generalize here, let me summarize. Umpires tend to leave out or minimize the mistakes that they made leading up to the s$$$house. However, the facts that I get from them are accurate, just not complete. Coaches and parents tend to make up facts or attribute motives to the umpires for which they have only the slimmest of evidence.
In years of dealing with these coaches and parents, I don't believe that they are deliberately lying. They are so wrapped up in winning that their minds immediately distort the truth so that they truly believe that an untruth is the truth.
Peter