[PeteBooth]

I agree with Peter's Osborne's assessment in that there is more to the story.

Originally posted by twest

My son's team was playing in a USSSA tournament this weekend. The umpires were being very nit-picky to begin with. Example, there was no base coach chalk line to indicate where he had to stand, but our coach got warned in 2 different innings rudely by the umpire. But when the hometown coach was out on the field standing in the same spots, nothing was said.

Forget about a chalk line as IMO that's irrelevant. During Tournaments, Umpires are instructed to be nit-picky and for very good reasons. Since we are dealing with teams from "all over the place" we want to keep control of the game.

There was probably a good reason why your coach got warned which we are not privy to in your thread.

But, one of the board members (again, playing a hometown team) came to our dugout in the last inning as we were playing defense to tell the coach that he needed to put his count indicator away or else he would be ejected!

First off the UMPIRES NOT ANYONE else has control of the game, meaning the BOD person cannot EJECT anyone in the PLAYING FIELD. He can ask a FAN to leave but that is Outside the diamond not inside. So the aforementioned statement by you is where IMO it gets shaky

Forget about the indicator, the only ones allowed in the dugout are coaches and players - PERIOD. When you say "he came to our dugout" my gut feeling is that the BOD member came to the "dugout area" which is a BIG difference, because the umpire if he saw someone other than the Coaches and Players in the dugout would have or should have instructed the BOD member to leave.

Bottom line in my opinion there's a "History" that we do not know about.

Your thread is not about rules governing indicators but a problem with a BOD member.

Pete Booth

[Edited by PeteBooth on Jun 7th, 2005 at 10:12 AM]