Issued my first Forfeit yesterday

[nickrego]

Varsity HS game, I have the plate.

The home team dominated this entire game, just about every inning produced runs for them, and nothing for the visitors. Most innings, it was 3 up - 3 down for the visitors. Both team's catchers sucked, and had trouble catching breaking balls properly. As usual, if a strike was on the fringe, and the catcher caught it ugly, I would call it a ball. If it was a fat strike, I would call it a strike no matter how he caught it. So here is where things go bad...

Top of 5th: Home 9 - Visitors 0

Visitors send 3 to the plate, home team sends 3 back to the dugout. Two strikeouts, one ground out.

Bottom of 5th: Home 9 - Visitors 0

Visitors make their first pitching change. Put in a kid that was throwing really slow / off-speed curves & junk. These pitches were ugly, but many of them were very fat strikes. I rung up one batter on a curve, a second went down swinging, and the third fly's out. I could tell the home team was getting pissy, because they didn't get that 10th run to make it a slaughter, and end the game early.

Top of 6th: Home 9 - Visitors 0

Visitors send 3 to the plate, home team sends 3 back to the dugout. Three strikeouts, two went down looking. No complaints from the visiting team.

Bottom of 6th: Home 9 - Visitors 0

Visitors make another pitching change. This kid is throwing heat and fast breaking balls. First home team batter goes down looking at a fast breaking ball. The catcher had set up too far back (as usual) and had to drop to his knees and reach in to catch it above the ground. It was a very fat strike. Batter walks off grumbling, crowd is getting upset. Next two batters reach on base hits. Fourth batter fly's out shallow, no advance of runners. Fifth batter goes down looking at the same pitch as the first batter. Catcher caught it the same way, also. Home team crowd is grumbling again (like I care). The home team just couldn't manufacture that last run off these two pitchers, and the were pissed as hell.

Top of 7th: Home 9 - Visitors 0

I am up the 1st base line a few feet, when I hear the catcher loudly telling the first base coach, both standing at the plate, what bull**** this is, how lousy my strike zone is, and how I am 'giving' the game away to the visitors. And to boot, he is looking me in the eye as he is saying it. This field has about a 15' backstop, so everybody hears what this catcher is saying. So I calmly walked over to the catcher and say, "your done for the rest of the game, go back to the dugout, your ejected." A split second after I finish saying the word ejected, another assistant coach comes flying out of the dugout, gets in my face screaming. I ask him who he is, he says that doesn't' matter, and starts screaming again. So, I calmly tell him that he is ejected also. He of course is still standing there screaming at me. I look over his head at the manager, who as managers do, is standing 10 feet away just watching, and tell him to get this guy off the field or the game is going to be over. I then turned and attempted to walk away. This guy grabs my arm, spins me around, and chest butts me, as he is continuing to scream in my face. Right there I raised my hands, stated that the game was over, and the home team just lost by forfeit (per our league rules).

My partner finally gets in from the field and pushes the guy away from me so I can leave the field. Now the coach starts screaming that I can't do that. There are only 3 outs left in this game and your going to forfeit, giving me a loss. This was a great win you just stole from us, etc. So, as I am walking off the field, I hear my partner say, "sorry guys, there's nothing I can do for you. He has called the game, I can't change it for you. It's out of my hands." I don't think I need to tell you how that made me feel. I decided not to bust him up side the head though.

So as I am walking through the parking lot, this assistant coach I had ejected comes flying around from the dugout and starts screaming at me again. The manager is, once again just behind him watching, so I tell him he better get him away from me. He says OK, and pulls him off and sends him back to the field. I figure I better just get in my car and get out of dodge without taking my gear off. As I am driving away, I realize I still have one game ball in my pouch. So I drive over to where my partner is 'still' standing talking with the manager and a couple of fans / parents, roll down the window, and toss the ball toward my partner [I use the term loosely] (it bounces a couple of times and rolls to him). As I am driving away, I see my partner still talking to them. Let me add, that when we walked out onto the field, instead of going over and checking equipment, my partner was busy shaking everybody's hand, asking how's the family to coaches and fans...A real smoozer.

My feeling about all this is they were just outraged because I did not change my zone, which was perfectly acceptable for the first 4 innings, to accommodate them getting that last run for the slaughter rule. I never have done that, and never will. It just wasn't good enough for them to win 9-0, they wanted that 10th run. Otherwise, like the coach said, they would have kept their mouths shut, gotten those last 3 inevitable outs, and gone home with the win.

So I just got off the phone with the commissioner, and he has decided to not uphold their appeal, the forfeit stands. He laughingly told me that in the appeal report, it stated that I 'threw' a baseball at the crowd in the parking lot as I was leaving. He also said that the visiting team manager's story matched up completely with mine.

To top it all off, the home team was a Christian school.