[UmpJM]

BlueLawyer,

Good post to start this thread. I started posting on this forum a little over a year ago, and had "lurked" for about a year prior to that. From my perspective, I can assure you that the AMLU strike is not the source of what you find distasteful in this forum. It was going on, to greater and lesser degress, well before then.

When I do post on this forum, I do my best to be civil. I am not above making the occasional sarcastic remark, but I don't go looking to pick fights with people. Out of respect for the members of this forum, I take some care with what I write so that it is coherent, I do my best not to publish misinformation, and I try to refrain from posting when I have nothing to say that will contribute to the conversation.

The internet is a wonderful and terrible thing. I know I have learned a lot from both reading and posting on this forum. One of the things that make it both wonderful and terrible is that pretty much anybody can say anything he wants on the internet, without any of the repercussions that might occur in a face-to-face or even "non-anonymous" conversation. On a few occasions over the last year (three, if I remember correctly), I have gotten into "tiffs" with other members of this forum. In each case, I had my say, they had their's, and it was over. I am sure this is true from my perspective, and I believe it is from their's. But some things I can't control. I continue to have conversations with these people, and occasionally "argue" (but I hope in a good way), because I respect their knowledge, experience, and willingness to share both.

There are other people on this board whose existence I do my best to not acknowledge publicly in ANY WAY. I have never addressed a post to any of them, I have never responded to a post they have made, I have never directly referenced or quoted the content of one of their posts (except exactly once), and I have not even mentioned their names, except on the rarest of occasions.

They are TROLLS (one of the "terrible" things about the internet). In my opinion, the current TROLL population of this board is three. In my experience, the only way to deal with trolls is to completely ignore them. This is not always easy to do. But until everyone does, they will continue to pollute this forum with their juvenile drivel.

In my experience, umpires can be a cranky lot - not by nature, but rather because of the nature of what they do. They are charged with the burden of being paragons of calm and rationality, even when lunatic coaches engage in insanely disrespectful behavior towards them because they didn't like the call the umpire just made - which, most likely, was the correct call. Sometimes it is very embarrassing to be a coach.

So, if some of them feel the need to come here occasionally and "blow off a little steam", I really don't begrudge them. I wish they wouldn't, but I have neither the right nor the authority to tell them they shouldn't, and I'm certainly not going to waste my time trying.

Apparently unlike some members of this forum, I have never had any luck with teaching a pig to sing. Maybe it's me, but it could just be the pig.

Again, nice post. Welcome to the forum.

JM