Partners "stepping in" to your discussion...

[Durham]

Originally Posted by rei

I had a long discussion with another umpire who is at that next level today about this scenario. He had an interesting take on it. He said "Hey, if the guy is crazy enough to step into your discussion, let him have it. Peel away and go to your position".

There was a little more to it than that, but that was the essense of the talk. Pete, he also more or less affirmed what you were saying about how you just have to sort of "take it" sometimes.

Personally, I don't think at the college level that anybody "needs" protection from a partner. If an umpire has made it to that level, they have usually shown the ability to handle coaches fairly well eh?

Well, I have been on the field many times where the coaches might of needed protection from my partner.

In all seriousness, I can only remeber two times where I stepped in a cut off a partner. Both were last year, one was DI the other was JC. So read and then let me have it.

The first one happened after a partner was MFing Pat Casey and ejected him. He kept MFing him and at one point when I was trying to get between them, I told my partner to go to the Fing outfield. I even called Pat's 1st base coach over to grab Pat and get him out of there.

The 2nd happened as my partner called a double play to end the inning that he got right. The dugout popped off and he started dropping the F-Bomb on them from the middle of the diamond as he was running towards the dugout. It was a JC game and my partner had just finished his 1st year of Pro ball. The way he was handling the situation wasn't going to help him accomplish anything, so I stepped in and defelected the heat. There was an ejection, but my actions helped him calm down and the situation was handled well after my short comment to the dugout.
After the game he thanked me for helping him from making a bad situation worse. We talked about how to handle those situations and he used some of it in his second year of pro ball and got promoted.

What do you do when you see a partner headed down the wrong road?