Not a TWP
Back when I was managing base(daddy)ball teams this exact situation happened. We had both the old style skull-cap/mask and a hockey type catcher's helmet. First inning the snaps on the helmet give out, third inning a strap on the mask breaks. We were the home team, leading and far out-matched the competition. The opposing manager said no way is he going to let us break his equipment. Umpire ruled no game. We protested and got it changed to a suspended game but it was never made up. Consequently our standing in the league suffered. So don't think that anytime something out of the ordinary is posted here, or on any baseball board for that matter, that it's immediately TWP territory.
Do you actually think, in this day and age, if a HS manager needing to avoid a loss to make the playoffs would not avail himself of any rule twisting that he could think of? Back in the day, I myself twisted the more obscure and arcane rules to my advantage, especially when dealing with an umpire I thought had little or no clue. I earned that 'RAT' title several times over, and was able to come away with a few more wins for my teams because of it.
Now that I have come over the wall, I am trying to gauge how officious I need to be for FED ball. Generraly, working with the youngsters and their coaches(dads) was plenty easy: just show up in that sharp uniform with those certification patches and they figured "Can't mess with him easily, he knows his stuff." It was because those coaches aren't trying to make a living coaching, they're there to have some father-son bonding, have a good time, be entertained, etc. They don't have that same pressure to win that the HS manager may have.
So there's my perspective in a nutshell. This will be my first year doing FED games, and I don't want to be one of those aforementioned umpires "in the headlights."
|