Game Canceled: Umpires Not Notified!

[Mark T. DeNucci, Sr.]

Yesterday, Mark, Jr., and I had a VAR baseball DH scheduled for 04:00pm.

The DH was originally assigned to us on Arbiter in September 2015 with the contract showing School "A" as the Home School, and School "B" as the Visiting School, and the DH to be played at School "A". The contract was modified in November 2015 changing the Visiting School from School "B" to TBA. And the contract stayed the way.

As is our custom, on Wednesday, May 11, 2016, I sent an email to the AD at School "A" confirming our assignment to umpire the DH. I attached a copy of our Arbiter contracts and cc'ed our assigner. We both received Arbiter generated reminder emails for the DH on Friday, May 13, 2016.

We arrived at the game site at 03:00pm at the same time that players from School "A" were starting to arrive and none of them were wearing uniforms. The VAR Head Coach arrived at 03:10pm and when we asked him who their opponent was for today's DH he informed us that there was no game scheduled for today, !

Mark immediately started to check our email accounts while I checked our Arbiter accounts. There were no emails notifying us that the DH had been canceled, AND, the DH had mysteriously disappeared from our Arbiter schedules, !

I called the AD's office at 03:23pm. Her office phone had an out going message stating that she would be out of the office from 01:30pm on to supervise the JrHS league track championship which School "A" was hosting. I left a message telling her why I was calling and asked her to all me at her earliest convenience. Still waiting for a return phone call as I type this post.

When we got home I sent an email to our assigner telling him what happened including copies of our Arbiter contracts and Arbiter reminder emails. Still no response from him.

The game fee for the DH was $100. The StateHSAA's standard game contract has the following stipulation (which is in effect even if the game contract is an Arbiter contract):


2. Contracts affected by acts of God shall be maintained according to this schedule:

a. Contests cancelled prior to the departure of the official for the contest shall present no financial obligation to either party.

b. Contests cancelled or postponed after the arrival of the official but prior to the beginning of the contest shall result in payment of one third of the contract fee or round trip mileage if mileage is a part of the original contract.

c. Cancellation or suspension of contests begun shall result in full payment of contracted fee.

NOTE: When an official is hired to officiate more than one contest on a day at one site he/she will be only entitled to receive pay for contests concluded or underway prior to suspending play. EXAMPLE: A baseball double header suspended before the second game begins entitles the official to pay for game one only.


Since I have not yet heard from the AD or our assinger, I can only speculate as to whether the cancellation was "an act of God" or not "an act of God" but since the game was on our Arbiter schedules one minute and gone the next, I would bet dollars to donuts that the cancellation was not "an act of God".

Needless to say, Mark and I feel that we should be paid the entire game fee of $100.

What say you?

MTD, Sr.

[Rich]

I would pay you a single game fee as per our policy.

[Mark T. DeNucci, Sr.]

Originally Posted by Rich

I would pay you a single game fee as per our policy.

Why only a single game fee? It seems to me that when a school screws up they should pay the full freight. After all time is money.

MTD, Sr.

[Rich]

And you spent the same time driving there and back as if you worked a single game there.

I'm all for umpires getting paid, but we never assume a DH is guaranteed around here.

[CT1]

Our local policy is to call or text the coach the day before to make sure we're on the same page. I can't tell you how many times that has saved our umpires from showing up at a school for a "no-game".

[Mark T. DeNucci, Sr.]

Originally Posted by Rich

And you spent the same time driving there and back as if you worked a single game there.

I'm all for umpires getting paid, but we never assume a DH is guaranteed around here.

I agree with you to a point, usually when weather is involved. But in this case weather was not involved and until proven otherwise, the school made no attempt to contact the umpires to inform them that the DH had been canceled. Which brings us back to my position that time is money and we scheduled our time to umpire a DH and that the time spent to and from the game site is not relevant to this particular discussion.

In fact, while having lunch on the day of the DH we had decided that we didn't feel like umpiring that day and did not notify the school that we were not going to umpire today and just not shown up to umpire, and the DH was canceled because there were no umpires to umpire the DH, each of us would have been required to pay the school a penalty of $100. That is no different than the school just not notifying the umpires that the DH had been canceled especially when the school had received notice from the umpires that they would be there and the umpires also received a reminder that the game was going to be played.

When officials/umpires act in an unprofessional manner, they are subject to financial penalties and when the shoe is on the other foot, the financial penalties should be at least the same.

MTD, Sr.

[Rich]

Originally Posted by Mark T. DeNucci, Sr.

I agree with you to a point, usually when weather is involved. But in this case weather was not involved and until proven otherwise, the school made no attempt to contact the umpires to inform them that the DH had been canceled. Which brings us back to my position that time is money and we scheduled our time to umpire a DH and that the time spent to and from the game site is not relevant to this particular discussion.

In fact, while having lunch on the day of the DH we had decided that we didn't feel like umpiring that day and did not notify the school that we were not going to umpire today and just not shown up to umpire, and the DH was canceled because there were no umpires to umpire the DH, each of us would have been required to pay the school a penalty of $100. That is no different than the school just not notifying the umpires that the DH had been canceled especially when the school had received notice from the umpires that they would be there and the umpires also received a reminder that the game was going to be played.

When officials/umpires act in an unprofessional manner, they are subject to financial penalties and when the shoe is on the other foot, the financial penalties should be at least the same.

MTD, Sr.

Should/could/would.

I'm just telling you what the conference I assign does.

I will tell you where we do one better -- the second you arrive at a school, you are leaving with a full game check, EVEN IF the game doesn't start because of weather. Too many schools hold out hope for no reason and this way the umpire doesn't drive for no good reason.

I wouldn't paint the school with an unprofessional brush unless this is a pattern of behavior. There are a lot of moving parts and sometimes things get missed. I've learned the hard way, by making one or two mistakes the last two years.

[Welpe]

We are fortunate in our area that if we show up without a cancellation notice, we are getting paid. The same is true for weather so that puts the onus on the schools to make a decision well before game time.

[chapmaja]

Originally Posted by Mark T. DeNucci, Sr.

Yesterday, Mark, Jr., and I had a VAR baseball DH scheduled for 04:00pm.

The DH was originally assigned to us on Arbiter in September 2015 with the contract showing School "A" as the Home School, and School "B" as the Visiting School, and the DH to be played at School "A". The contract was modified in November 2015 changing the Visiting School from School "B" to TBA. And the contract stayed the way.

As is our custom, on Wednesday, May 11, 2016, I sent an email to the AD at School "A" confirming our assignment to umpire the DH. I attached a copy of our Arbiter contracts and cc'ed our assigner. We both received Arbiter generated reminder emails for the DH on Friday, May 13, 2016.

We arrived at the game site at 03:00pm at the same time that players from School "A" were starting to arrive and none of them were wearing uniforms. The VAR Head Coach arrived at 03:10pm and when we asked him who their opponent was for today's DH he informed us that there was no game scheduled for today, !

Mark immediately started to check our email accounts while I checked our Arbiter accounts. There were no emails notifying us that the DH had been canceled, AND, the DH had mysteriously disappeared from our Arbiter schedules, !

I called the AD's office at 03:23pm. Her office phone had an out going message stating that she would be out of the office from 01:30pm on to supervise the JrHS league track championship which School "A" was hosting. I left a message telling her why I was calling and asked her to all me at her earliest convenience. Still waiting for a return phone call as I type this post.

When we got home I sent an email to our assigner telling him what happened including copies of our Arbiter contracts and Arbiter reminder emails. Still no response from him.

The game fee for the DH was $100. The StateHSAA's standard game contract has the following stipulation (which is in effect even if the game contract is an Arbiter contract):


2. Contracts affected by acts of God shall be maintained according to this schedule:

a. Contests cancelled prior to the departure of the official for the contest shall present no financial obligation to either party.

b. Contests cancelled or postponed after the arrival of the official but prior to the beginning of the contest shall result in payment of one third of the contract fee or round trip mileage if mileage is a part of the original contract.

c. Cancellation or suspension of contests begun shall result in full payment of contracted fee.

NOTE: When an official is hired to officiate more than one contest on a day at one site he/she will be only entitled to receive pay for contests concluded or underway prior to suspending play. EXAMPLE: A baseball double header suspended before the second game begins entitles the official to pay for game one only.


Since I have not yet heard from the AD or our assinger, I can only speculate as to whether the cancellation was "an act of God" or not "an act of God" but since the game was on our Arbiter schedules one minute and gone the next, I would bet dollars to donuts that the cancellation was not "an act of God".

Needless to say, Mark and I feel that we should be paid the entire game fee of $100.

What say you?

MTD, Sr.

If this was the northern of the two states you work, try getting ahold of the assigner again, although if it's the one who assigned you for softball Saturday he can be a PITA to work with some of the time. If he doesn't respond and you get nowhere with the school AD, contact the StateHSAA person in charge of officials. He is usually pretty good about working with umpires on situations like this, provided the school will actually responded to him.

If this is the southern of the two states, I don't know how they handle it.

I do know that under the northern state's policies, that a game cancelled for a reason other than an Act of God reason shall require the school to pay the full game fee listed on the contracts.

I also would not put it past the assigner in question to be notified at the last minute and remove a game from Arbiter rather than list it as a cancelled game. I know, working as an assigner with Arbiter, that the game can be listed as cancelled, which opens the umpire up for other assignments.

We have had a major issue in the northern state with schools dropping officials from assignments at the last minute due to their scheduling mistakes. VB has had this become a major issue, thus the reason the umpires person for the stateHSAA made a very clear mention of the rules at the assigners meeting this summer (not that the VB association has decided to support officials who have been screwed by schools cancelling assignments).

[Mark T. DeNucci, Sr.]

Well, we have sent two emails to our assigner who has yet to respond to them. This morning I finally received a return email for the Home school's AD. She told me that her school never had a baseball game of any kind scheduled for that day. I told her that we received Arbiter emails on Friday, May 13th (five days before the "game") reminding us of the game and that we had sent her an email on Wednesday, May 11th, a full seven days before the "game". I asked her why didn't my email on May 11th cause her to respond to me about the "game" (readers: please keep in mind that Mark and I had umpired at her school at least six times in the last three school years so she had received reminder emails from us before in the past) and her response was: "I am too busy to read my emails." She said that she would call our assigner to see what went wrong.

The plot has thickened, more to this story will follow.

MTD, Sr.

[Welpe]

As luck would have it, this happened to my partner and I on Saturday. We showed up an hour before our game to the park, not a soul around. We waited, I called my assigner, BSed in the parking lot for a while and then took off. We both are getting paid. Easy money.

[Rich]

Originally Posted by Mark T. DeNucci, Sr.

Well, we have sent two emails to our assigner who has yet to respond to them. This morning I finally received a return email for the Home school's AD. She told me that her school never had a baseball game of any kind scheduled for that day. I told her that we received Arbiter emails on Friday, May 13th (five days before the "game") reminding us of the game and that we had sent her an email on Wednesday, May 11th, a full seven days before the "game". I asked her why didn't my email on May 11th cause her to respond to me about the "game" (readers: please keep in mind that Mark and I had umpired at her school at least six times in the last three school years so she had received reminder emails from us before in the past) and her response was: "I am too busy to read my emails." She said that she would call our assigner to see what went wrong.



The plot has thickened, more to this story will follow.



MTD, Sr.

I've changed my mind. You should get every penny.

[udbrky]

Originally Posted by Rich

And you spent the same time driving there and back as if you worked a single game there.

I'm all for umpires getting paid, but we never assume a DH is guaranteed around here.

This is true, but they entered the contract to do both games and attempted to fulfill their part of the contract.

Furthermore, they could have taken another assignment, had they been notified that the games were canceled. There also may have been schools stuck with one umpire, and they could have filled the spot.

Does it show up in the past games in arbiter as canceled or not?

[Mark T. DeNucci, Sr.]

Originally Posted by udbrky

This is true, but they entered the contract to do both games and attempted to fulfill their part of the contract.

Furthermore, they could have taken another assignment, had they been notified that the games were canceled. There also may have been schools stuck with one umpire, and they could have filled the spot.

Does it show up in the past games in arbiter as canceled or not?

Mark, Jr., and I received Arbiter generated Reminder Emails on Fri., May 13th, and the games were still on our Arbiter Schedule as of that date. Sometime between then and the day of the DH the games disappeared from the Arbiter Schedule and the Arbiter Contracts also disappeared from Arbiter.

MTD, Sr.

[WhistlesAndStripes]

You all should get paid in full. Maybe the AD will then decide it's worth $200 to read her emails. And respond.


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