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I don't think that the issue was the fact that these were baseball umpires. The issue is that they were unqualified to umpire any baseball or softball game beyond perhaps a house league 12 y/o game. Those kids probably don't even own a rulebook much less ever having studied it.
I worked a tourney yesterday with a very young partner, 21 y/o, who was there with his dad who was running the tourney. He had obviously done some amount of softball umpiring. As BU, he was good an any call that had to be made on an immediate play at a base, but as soon as the play was over, his head was a million miles away. Several times he was looking at the sky or the ground and not watching what runners were doing when the ball was being returned to the circle.
Later I was BU in another game and we had a play where there was contact between a runner rounding third and F5 (his primary coverage as PU). The runner stopped at third and wouldn't have scored under any circumstances. I see it out of the corner of my eye because I'm watching trailing runner. Partner says nothing. Of course offensive coach wants home awarded to the runner and comes to me wanting the call (I was in C on the play). I didn't want to send him to PU and open a pandora's box so I just said that there was OBS but no awarded base would be given. After the game my partner asks me why I didn't award home to the runner.
So 1) he saw the OBS and said nothing because he didn't know he had responsibility for the lead runner rounding 3rd and 2) he thought that anytime OBS occurred there was a base awarded.
Very very rare that a young kid out to make some spending money is going to be a serious student of the game.
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