Need some help

[harmbu]

I witnessed a game the other night where there was an interference call and the coaches were discussing the situation with the umpire. At one point the umpire was talking to one of the coaches and the other coach walked up. The umpire held out his arm and told the coach to stay away. To me this looks like the umpire might be telling the coach something that he doesn't want the other coach to hear. Why can an umpire talk to one coach and exculed the other. Is there a rule about this or is this just common courtesy to let both coaches in on what is happening. I would think that if the umpire talked to both coaches at the same time, he would be sure that he told them the same thing and there would be no problem with interpretation.

[Tim C]

Your post is unclear to me if both coaches were from the SAME team. If they were from the SAME team an UMPIRE SHOULD NEVER allow coaches to team up.

I have a personal rule:

Assistant coaches do not exist. If they say ANYTHING in an argument I turn to the head guy and tell himn, "get this person outta here!" I do this at FED, college or (semi) professional levels.

If you are an umpire posting I am sure that you recognize that IF coaches (or players) start to team up on your partner that you come to the aid to keep everyone away but the head coach (manager).

NOW if the coaches you saw were from BOTH teams then the umpire was exactly right in excluding one coach at a time. The discussion IS NOT between the coaches (teams) it is between the umpire and ONE person. Proper procedure would be to discuss (explain the RULE being enforced) to the coach. Any other individual has no business in that discussion.

Let's place this in a different context:

Basketball or football officials ONLY discuss with both coaches (i.e. coaches of the two teams) if they are expalining an activity that is administrative in nature. Why would baseball be any different?

[GarthB]

Yeah, what Tee said.