In my 15 years of umpiring baseball and softball I've racked up about 1200 games. There have been about five times where an angry parent or coach decided to give me a piece of their mind while I was in the parking lot or undressing at my car.
I guess that's not a bad overall ratio. Then again, I dont work slow pitch
. Nothing I couldn't handle, just the usual "you're the worst umpire ever, you robbed the kids, I'm reporting you to the state association" stuff. But with some of the whack jobs out there you never know.
The only time a coach actually made physical contact with me it was more laughable than threatening.
There was a play at the plate where the runner and catcher got tangled up. The catcher got the worst of it. But she was standing right on top of the plate waiting for the throw and the runner did try to avoid her.
An assistant coach for the defense made an immediate full sprint beeline from the dugout toward me at the plate, screaming, "That's BS! That's BS!". I gave a big overhand roundhouse ejection signal before he got halfway to me.
The guy's ranting like a madman and decides that he's going to chest bump me. The only problem was that he was about four inches shorter than me, I had about 50 pounds on him and I'm wearing a Wilson Platinum chest protector.
The guy had to jump up just to be chest-to-chest with me. I'm standing my ground, and this guy's jumping in the air, hitting that Platinum and bouncing off of it like a rubber ball. I never budged and he bounces off of me about four or five times. The harder he tries hitting me the farther he flies backwards!