|
I agree with Peter.
I ejected a Legion coach on Friday night. He's a high school coach during the season (I really don't understand the no-contact rule here for HS coaches in the summer with their HS teams, but am assuming that none exists) and his team reached the regional finals before losing to a near-.500 team that amazingly went on to win the state title.
Many of the HS kids couldn't make this tourney, so he got pounded twice. He got dumped in the 7th inning down 4 runs in the second game when he sent his runner from second before the pitcher started his motion home and a rundown ensued where he wanted (1) obstruction, or (2) the runner at third called "safe" for some reason.
After telling him that neither was going to be called and that we were starting the game up (so I could get the final 2 outs and get out of Dodge), he calls out to the BU that he needs to help me and starts walking slowly towards him in right field (I had come up to take the front end of the rundown and called the out at third) and I told him not to go out there.
He ignored me and walked toward the other umpire. I repeated myself when he was about 10 feet away still walking toward the other umpire and kept walking as if I wasn't even there. THEN I dumped him.
Moral of the story is that I didn't really feel my heart race or my blood pressure increase as I was ejecting him. Unfortunately, being a new coach used to umpires kissing his backside (since coaches essentially determine assignments here) he probably still doesn't understand why he was run, but someone did talk to him afterwards and explain why he got dumped -- and that person understood and tried to impart some wisdom on the coach.
--------------------------
The lesson from the above is: If you tell someone to do something and they openly defy you, they gotta go. Otherwise you've just shown everyone that you're not in charge.
Also, try to keep your ears inside the fence. If someone is being truly offensive or goes beyond the standard for behavior, find a game manager to get rid of the idiot. Or if none exists, call time and tell the coach to take care of the guy -- if he refuses, see the paragraph above (in other words, lose the coach and find somebody that WILL take care of the fan or end the game). Remain calm and try not to battle with a fan -- it's a confrontation that makes you look bad regardless of how justified it is.
--Rich
PS - There are 3 guys in my area that I work with regularly. These 3 guys are the only umpires in the area I would take anywhere and know they had my back. All four of us dumped somebody this weekend. It's that time of the year (summer baseball) and teams in general act up in the summer, especially coaches of traveling teams. If you need to run somebody, do it, and like Peter said, learn something from it.
|