Handling a problerm school.

[MPC]

We all have those schools that just don’t get it. In particular, I have a school where I often umpire that has zero respect for umpires. Ie: catcher’s holding balls, pitchers shaking their heads, catcher telling you the rules as only he knows them, catcher selling you out with the coach on the close corner pitches, games never starting on time, never keeping balls available, bring you balls between batters that are still in the wrappers, etc. I’ve had several ejections because of such behavior at this school and some have resulted in game altering moves like ejecting the starting catcher and bringing in a frosh who’s never caught and allows runs on past balls.

Then you have jv snipers in dugout yelling about pitches and making bush comments and the coaches don’t do anything about it. They leave that up to you and freak out when you deal with it. My next game at this school is it’s biggest rival and as much as I don’t want to anticipate problems, it is inevitable for this one school.

I never start the game with a warning but I feel in this case, I need to tell the coach up front in the pregame that: 1. You take care of the bush comments in the dugout 2. You make sure your catcher isn’t talking smack to me during the game and demonstrating 3. You make sure your pitcher and other players don’t demonstrate if they don’t like a call. I’ll have zero tolerance with this and if you don’t want to prevent it from happening, don’t be upset when each action gets ejected.

This seems like a red tail way to handle it but I think it may be good preventative umpiring in this situation. The school has a decent team and the coach is always looking for an excuse in a loss. He knows his kids are out of control but won’t deal with it. As mentioned before, when you do deal with it, he thinks it is harsh and unfair but the more you let go the worse it gets.

I am a vet umpire that most of the respectable schools want on the big games. Reg and post season ratings are always high but this one school always tries to get around me because they think I have a bone for them.

What are some of the methods in handling these problem schools that some of you guys use?