Catharsis

[SanDiegoSteve]

It sounds like you had an unprofessional umpire. We try to do our best to weed out guys like this, but many continue to get assigned games, sometimes due to umpire shortages. Hopefully you can report him and get him scratched from any more of your games.

We call coaches "rats" because for the most part, they are. It is somewhat of an endearing term we use, and we don't mean it any more maliciously than the people who shout, "kill the umpire."

Some rats are better than others, however, and some are even frequent and respected posters on this forum. The little cheese-eaters don't take the "rat" tag too seriously.

When you've umpired as long as many of us here have, you would find yourself calling coaches and players rats too.