God, the First Amendment and the Umpire

[BlueLawyer]

But as far as name calling on this board goes, that thread was mild. And yeah, it was way off in left field, but so are a lot of things on this board.

So, yeah, pulling the thread would have been ok- your thread, your pull. But I don't know what criteria the mods use when deciding to shut it down.

Here's a general musing from me. Most of us umpire because we love baseball. I know that's why I do it. I get a little romantic and misty when I really think about it. Baseball is now and always has been the sport in America that most intersects with society at large. Racism, sexism, drug abuse, spousal abuse, religion, labor strife, anti-Semitism- all of these issues have been played out to a greater or lesser extent in my lifetime being played out in the microcosm that is baseball. So is a topic off limits because it's not baseball? Not umpiring?

Here's one from my basketball career. 10 years ago or so I dumped a kid in a high school game- no "T", no warning, for calling another kid the N-word. Both kids, by the way, were African American. When the coach asked me what happened, I told him. He tried alternately to argue to me that it couldn't be racism because both kids were black and that that's just the way kids on the street talk to each other. I told him that that word had no place in a high school gym, and his players- no matter what their color- had better learn that.

Was I right? Was I wrong? Did I overreact? Would I do the same thing today? All debatable. And all implicate the larger societal issues of the day- then and now. So is that an appropriate topic for this board? That's what I'm trying to figure out here.

Strikes and outs!