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Originally Posted by APG
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I heard about this on the local sports radio station on the way to work. Seeing the video makes it even more incredulous. I hope this guy gets "tripped" every day of his 15 days in jail.
While I certainly don't defend them, parents yelling at officials is nothing more than parents reacting to something that brings harm to their kids. They like to see their kids succeed in all things that life throws at them, and when they feel someone has caused them to fail, they're going to react, sometimes way over the top. Conversely, if they feel someone causes the opposing team to fail, they're quiet as church mice.
That said, I've umpired boys baseball up to the high school level, and now I umpire girls fast-pitch softball up to the NCAAs. By far, the worst parents I've ever seen were the ones in my son's local Little League at games involving 7-8 year-olds in the machine pitch division. To this day, I'm convinced it was because this was the first division of ball where scores and standings were kept, and championship trophies were awarded by the league at the end of the season. Young parents just couldn't handle their first exposure to competitive play. The problem was exacerbated by the fact that the umpires who worked those games were brand new volunteers who didn't have a good grasp of the rules.
As the league UIC, I tried each year to get the league's Board of Directors to change the machine pitch division to a non-competitive environment, where no standings were kept and no post-season championship games were played. I never succeeded. So each season, I had to deal with unruly parents yelling at my new umpires, and actually fighting with each other in the stands. It was unreal.