[cbfoulds]

Tee & Garth:
Not often I'd see myself defending a Rat; but on one hand, I feel some sympathy for Emerling's advice. How, exactly, is a coach to deal effectively with less-than-competent umpires? To deal with a gross misapplication of a rule in an otherwise judgment-based call? His method is effective and appropriate within the rules. As a coach, he needs the dummy to express and commit to the error, so it can be protested, and hopefully fixed. As someone committed to trying to call the game by the published and accepted Rules, rather than some made-up goulash, I neither resent nor fear protests.

Now: that said, I have had Rats [actually, usually youth-league wannabe mousies] try less-effective versions of this technique on me, based on: "so what you're saying ....", followed by an absurd MIS-statement of what I did, in fact say. Now, as y'all may recall, this routine usually causes me to go postal - not here, though. In fact, what they are doing is so transparently foolish, it is all I can do to stop myself laughing at them.

There is a place in the world for intelligent Rats.