[gboston]

I know exactly how you feel. I see many of the things that you talk about and the attitudes that parents and coaches display. Last week there was a very unusual incident in a Dixie Youth baseball game that was handled by the umpires in a manner that they thought was fair...as did every Dixie Youth Official who was talked to until it got to the National Director who decided that the play in question was handled in a diplomatic but incorrect way. I won't get into what happened (we all learned from it as did the umpires who were more than fair). But a protest was filed a full inning after the incident. The coach who filed the protest was insistent that the rules must be followed. Dixie Youth Rules state that a protest must be filed "before the next pitch" in order to be legal and valid. So this made his protest illegal and therefore the game stood as is. The head of the protest committee made sure that "all rules must be followed" including the rule that state when the protest must be filed. However, after the head of the protest committee informed all parties that the protest was illegal, the coach involved talked other members on the committee into voting to uphold his protest anyway. What kind of example does this set for our youth. This is a prime example of people only using the part of the rules that benefit them personally and not caring about the big picture. There are many people involved in youth sports who are only concerned about doing things that give them personal gratification. They use the youth sports programs as a platform for their own agendas. That's society for you.

[Edited by gboston on May 26th, 2005 at 12:57 PM]