Today I was doing a game at a park with three diamonds. The two umpires for the one diamond were there, I was there, and of course my partner who was doing plate with me that day is late again! And he is the assignor of the league and he always shows up late but this time we needed him because on the final diamond there was a Mosquito game that had no umpires because the scheduel got screwedup or somethign and the guy I was working with was the assingor and they needed umpires. So I wasn't sure if one of the two guys at the other diamond should go and call the game from behind the mound or whether I should go and do that because I thought my partner may shwo up anytime now and call an umpire who lived nearby at the last minute to do that game so I didn't say anything and didn't d oanything. And I was standing around with 4 coaches who were ready to do ground rules and it was 3 minutes till FIRST PITCH and we were already 2 minutes late
for the start of groundrules and so I get the game balls fromt he home team caoch and we start groundrules and finallhy he shows up and says "sorry bout that guys. Now what was the ground rule you were talking about?" with a chuckle as if he didn't care
and meanwhile we still have no umpires at the one diamond. So once the grond rules are over I tell him he should get there on time becaause he could have helped get an umpire at the diamond with more umpirs and he's like "I'm here to umpire not to assign". So then I say "well yea byt you should have showe d up on time anyways". And am I wrong to think that an umpire should show up at least 15 minutes before game time? Because he does this all the time and it is really starting to annoy me. Had he shown up on time he would have probably had time to arrange so that the little kids get an umprie too and he can call it from behind the pitcher's plate. But instead he had to show up late AGAIN and they eneded up having the coach from the home team call the game from the pitcher's mound.
The thing about it was that it broke my heart to see these kids playing without an umpire, but I thought that it was best if the administration learned from their mistake and learned how to schedule umpires properly. It is still a real frustration though becaus ethey were left without umpires because another umpire didn't show up on time.