[PeteBooth]

Originally posted by brandda

I'm curious as to others opinions on this. In a couple of threads I have seen references to the umpires' performance in the LLWS, but I have not yet seen anyone talk about the latitude that the umpires are giving the players in terms of their conduct.

The LL rulebook gives umpires the explicit right to eject players for unsportsmanlike conduct. So far I have seen players do everything from victory dances to shot calling to outright taunting of opposing pitchers and as yet the unmpires have done nothing.

This baffles me. If the kids in our league behaved like that, I would toss them immediately and without discussion. They of course know this and therefore don't do it, but there does not seem to be any such constraints on the players in the series.

So several questions. Am I just an old fuddy duddy who is out of touch and overreacting? If not, then who should be held accountable for this? To me this is part of the umpires' area to police to maintain game control, but these umpires don't seem to feel so.

IMO, the LLWS is being treated no differently than the World Series, NBA Finals, Stanly Cup Finals or the Super Bowl. Officials give more leeway to players during these times.

Also, IMO the main problem is that TODAY the game doesn't take care of itself like when we played.

Let's take this "hot dog" issue for a minute. In our day, this would be a non issue because the next time this player came up to bat guess where the pitch would be. Today if you do this holy h**l would break loose and that IMO is the BIG difference bewteen Yesterday and Today.

Baseball unlike the "other" major sports has become to proper which is why these type tactics make headlines.

The other thing that I don't know for certain is that it seems on the surface anyway that the LLWS umpires don't have much authority which could be a major problem.

The World Series Director or whatever you want to call this person has NO business being on the field telling the Harlem Manager that this type of behavior is unacceptable. IMO that's Blues job.

As soon as we enter the confines of the field is when our jurisdiction begins and no-one should tell us or instruct us how to conduct a game. That part is called Umpire evaluation or rating. If someone thinks I can't control a game then so be it - Tell me UP FRONT but if I earned the right to be there then allow me and my other umpires to Run the Game

To sum up, I think in all BIG Type games officials give some leeway, however, I agree the Umpires on the field should take more control of the situation because if some of these type antics were done in the regular season, bedlam might have arsien.

Pete Booth