Quote:
Originally Posted by Rich Ives
Just curious. How many of you actually were a manager/head coach (assistant doesn't count)?
It's a whole different world.
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Five years of little league with two differents sons, and also two years as a head freshman coach at the high school level. I loved coaching and prefer it to umpiring. However, the time committments at the high school level were just too much for me especially still having kids that play (used to have four, down to one now). Freshman doubleheaders around here are played at 10am so I didn't miss any of my kids games but it was tough to do that and get my hours in at work (I am not a teacher). I loved it though.
I had umpired for several years before I coached high school so I knew how to treat umpires, plus I had worked with some of the guys. I didn't let my kids give umpires any grief or disrespect; if they did they sat. I told them that the umpires would be at least as good at umpiring as they were at playing at this stage in their development so they had no room to complain. I also had a meeting with my parents before the season started and told them that I and the school expected them to treat the game officials with courtesy and respect as well, and if they didn't they would be asked to leave. Had one problem in two years, told the parent to be quiet or they would have to leave and they shut up. No matter how good or bad I thought the umps were at my games, win or lose, I always thanked them at the end of the day for coming out. It isn't easy to find guys willing to work freshman games.
Parent issues are the biggest problem as everyone thinks that their kid is the next Derek Jeter. In high school, I told parents that I would never discuss playing time with them and I didn't. Of course my philosophy was that everyone played in one game or the other of each doubleheader so that diffused a lot of problems, but I would have some kids play a partial game if I had more than 18 players on occasion. I would discuss it with the kid, never the parent. I miss coaching, and actually loved practice more than the games in some respects. I enjoyed teaching the game to the kids because I love it so much myself. Umpiring is a way for me to stay around the game I love while still being able to maintain as much free time as I want to have.