[Justme]

As I have stated before here I’m a long time baseball umpire but I’m fairly new to softball (1 year HS & some adult slow pitch).

This past weekend I umpired a Toys-4-Kids slow pitch tournament with 72 teams. Tournament rule #3 said “No beer allowed” and teams caught drinking will be kicked out of the tournament. I asked the TD prior to the start of my first game exactly what he expected me to enforce. His response was “If they’re drinking in the dugout kick them out but before you do call me and make sure that they have paid me their money.” So before every game I told the coaches to keep the beer out of the dugouts. The park rangers tossed 1 team playing on a different field and the cops were called twice by a couple of my fellow umpires but I had no problems.

I did have one coach request that I go into the other team's dugout and "sniff" their cups because they had beer in them. I refused and he threatened to pull his team from the tournament. I told him to either to pull his team or go back to the dugout but I wasn't going to "sniff" any cups.

My first game started at 9am and the beer was already flowing. My question is:

Is this “normal” for adult slow pitch tournaments? If so, how do you (or would you) guys handle it?