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Pet peeve: A player or coach citing ANYTHING from TV as justification for arguing a call.
A couple of years ago during a playoff game, I'm working with a rookie umpire who was behind the plate. There was a no tag/no touch play at home. The rook hesitates, neither player reacts, he rules safe. Teammates scream for the catcher to tag the runner, he does and my partner rules the runner out on appeal.
Both coaches were on the field arguing. The defense wants to know why he ruled the runner safe and the offense wanted to know why we changed the call. Once the defensive coach realized he got his out call, he backed off, but that didn't stop the offense from arguing that 1) the umpire should have made No call and confused everyone by calling "safe, and 2) an umpire can never change a judgment call.
I slowly walked in listening to the argument and the second I heard the coach cite Richie Ashburn from the previous night's Pirate-Phillies game, I turned to my partner and said, "We've heard enough, let's play ball". We both turned away from the coach and returned to our position. He didn't know what to do standing there all by himself so he went back to the dugout totally confused why we refused to listen to him.
After the game, he complained to the complex coordinator and the minute he mentioned the Pirates-Phillies game, the coordinator just started laughing an walked away. I almost started feeling sorry for the coach d:-)
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The bat issue in softball is as much about liability, insurance and litigation as it is about competition, inflated egos and softball.
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