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parents
I agree that in LL at least, parents should not get on the umpire too much. Chances are, you are wrong. Here is a situation that I ran into today that had the fans up in arms and I asked 3 other officials of the call afterwards and they told me I was correct and the parent was an idiot.
R3 is stealing home. B4 hits a dribbler to pitcher who easily picks it up, and makes what should be a routine play at home. F2 drops ball when tagging out runner, so they are both in a pile wrestling with each other to get to ball/bag (not WWF stuff, just trying to get around each other). R3 gets to bag first and scores with a little push on F2. Hilarity ensues. Fans go nuts trying to say that R3 had to get out of the way so F2 could get ball. I flat out refused to argue with them and continued the game. After inning, F2's father continues to argue that F2 had right to baseline, not R3.
I am pretty sure that was a cut and dry call, but the parents got pretty upset because they did not know the rules.
However, in your situation, it was clearly a misinterpretation of the rules, but arguing and yelling at official will do NO good, other than tick him off. As was suggested, manager should have called time and calmly talked to the plate umpire. If you have a rule book, that gives you more leverage for a rules call. A good umpire will look in the book on a rules question, IMO. The 3B coach should not have sent the runner back to 2nd. That was stupid.
As for little league umpires being volunteers. At least around here they get paid, so there is an incentive to know the rules....you won't get asked back. If they are not getting paid for the plate, they are probably some sort of board member, etc. It is too much work for no pay. Either way, umpires MUST know the rules. It only hurts the kids.
I would say something about the call to whatever sort of governing body your area has. They should either get another umpire or correct his misreadings of the rulebook.
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