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Originally Posted by ctblu40
BTW- in umpire school, these guys are instructed on how to handle situations. The training includes the instructors going mental, as well as other things such as batters charging mound, bench clears, ect.
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This is true. I remember going over this for a few days at the school. Also, and more specific to this situation, at one of our National Camps, during the on-field session, they addressed this sort of thing specifically:
Hearing 'through the grapevine' that one of the attendees had been party to a serious blowup, they waited until he was on-field, and the instructor threw it all at him. At first, we stood around gasping and laughing hysterically, but it wouldn't stop! The instructor took all three bases back to the dugout, buried the rubber, tried to dig up the plate, threw his hat OVER the backstop, ran around and asked EACH PLAYER in the field about the call, and more! The ump remained still and silent, as the BU in this situation did, each time rotating around to face the coach when he returned to yell. After about 10 minutes (honestly), the instructor stopped cold. He walked calmly over to the ump and said "at what point are you going to do something? I can do this all day." But the real lesson came when he turned to address the other umpire. He looked him in the eye and said "Where were you? I didn't see you once. Get your a$$ next to your partner and don't let him out of arm's reach. "
Sadly, the post-mortem on the incident happened behind closed doors, so we didn't get to hear what the instructors would have considered the 'perfect course of action', but needless to say, it wasn't the mannequin approach.
Bainer.