Quote:
Originally Posted by SanDiegoSteve
Again, he was enforcing THEIR rules, not refusing to enforce their rules. They are the ones who were trying to circumvent their own set of local playing rules by allowing coaches out of the dugout.
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This description is exactly right, and the crux of the matter.
The league seems to run loosely: some rules are strictly enforced, others are not. That's a difficult situation for a non-local umpire to enter, because you don't know which rules to enforce.
Different parts of the country run sports differently: some areas — especially larger areas with lots of teams and leagues — have air-tight rules because all hell would break loose if they didn't.
The OP, IIRC, is from West Virginia. Perhaps things are different there, and sports (like other institutions) are much more personal and political than they are in other areas. No disrespect to the Mountain State, but it matters which holler you're from.
My takeaways from the situation:
1. When working a new league, I'm going to be as open as possible to how they want to run things. It's their league, and they're paying me to run the game their way.
2. If I have no partner and can't figure out a dispute, I'd fall back on the rule book, explaining (perhaps apologetically) that I had no other choice. But that's not what happened in the OP: both coaches wanted to be out of the dugout, and the OP went after them.
3. Like a lot of people, I need to be right. I try to keep that impulse in check on the field and off, and to listen to what other people are telling me. If I'm wrong or partly to blame, I try to be mature enough to admit it. In my experience, the only way to learn from mistakes is to recognize them as such.