[greymule]

Whatever was in the air two Sundays ago may not have blown entirely away.

Somehow, I suspected in the first inning tonight that this coach wasn't going to make it through the game.

He acts as if I'm robbing him blind on the first pitch of the game, which was well over the zone. (He saw it all from his seat on the bench.)

Then, one of his players makes an error, and he screams out to the guy that he is an a$$hole.

Warned him about language in the 4th inning.

In the fifth, he thinks that runners are awarded bases from where they were when the ball entered DBT. He tossed the "F" word my way, and I tossed him off the premises. He got in his car and burned rubber out of the parking lot.

Incidentally, this is a co-ed slow pitch business league, where the best teams play somewhere between F and G level on a good day. And the team this guy was hot to beat was pure company picnic. The fences, by the way, were at most 220 feet (I'm not exaggerating). For the big leaguers.

It's in the air around here at the higher levels, too. Last week, an experienced SP ump terminated a game when the players got out of control, throwing equipment (including bases), threatening each other, and even cursing out a township official who tried to calm things down. That didn't go over well. Now the league is considering ruling a double forfeit. What galled this ump the most was being called a foul name by one of the players—a former teammate.