Quote:
Originally posted by PeteBooth
Tee I agree in principal with your statement, however, the game needs to move along and if the Coach and your partner "are going at it" IMO, you as the experienced member need to interject for the following reasons:
1. Move the game along especially if it's a Time Limit Game
2. Restore Order to the game
3. Do something before it gets to the "ugly" stage
My view is that we are a team out there just like when we played and when someone does something to our "teammate" we want to "stick up for him" We might not agree with it (but that's for practice).
Therefore, I agree in principal but up to a point. Yes we all need to learn and give our partners their due, but once one as an experienced official sees it "going nowhere" then in order to restore order and get the game moving, then I think it's appropriate to intervene.
First off with your experience, I doubt whether you would even allow an assistant to question anything which is probably the main problem with this thread to begin with.
|
Pete,
Well said - I agree with all of your points, especially as a crew chief or perhaps a veteran working with younger (less experienced) umpires. In three man crews, this happens more than you think. Here's a couple of examples from this year...
1. U2 (me) kicked a call at second base. Third base dugout goes nuts as the manager comes out to get a piece of me. PU is keeping an eye on the dugout and sure enough, one of the rats calls me a "fu@kin di@kwad" from the bench. My partner, ofcourse, has my back and runs the guy immediately
2. First base coach, who got himself confused with being the manager
, was voicing his displeasure early in the game with my strike zone. I gave him a break and warned him that I wasn't going to hear anymore out of him. Later in the game, my partner had a few wackers that went against that same team and he ended up having to run one of their players. Needless to say, he wasn't very popular with that team.
Sure enough, an inning later, we had a play at first where the first base manager
,(I mean coach), thought F3 pulled his foot. He started going off on my partner and I immediately jumped in (I was trailing the play up the line and knew my partner got it right). Knowing he already had an ejection and was probably going to get another one, I stepped in to deflect some of the attention off him. It didn't take me long to run the first base coach and "skip" came up to me and said...
"Why did you eject him when he wasn't even talking to you"? I told him... "Who's running this team anyways Skip?" He said "I am". I said, "Well you better tell him to let you do your job because he was chirping at me about balls & stikes earlier in the game and I told him to knock it off. Now he's on my partner about plays at first base and we're not going to listen to TWO managers". Needless to say he got the point.
My partner thanked me after the game for stepping in because if he would of run the first base coach, all hell would have broke loose and he probably would of had a few more ejections on his hands. By me stepping in and "taking one for the team", I deflected some of the attention off of him and onto me. I don't normally do this but I felt this situation warranted a little team work.