Why not another? 9U play

[jwwashburn]

Consider this OP:

An 18 yr old kid gives me a McFish instead of a Big Mac and the French Fries are still frozen and the Coke I ordered is an Ice Tea. This is after he shorted me 3 dollars in change and did not wash his hands before handling the food.

That is pretty close to the product I am getting as a consumer of these umpires except they are making more than twice the hourly wage that the Mcdonald's kid is making. I expect the guy at McDonald's to have some training and have some idea what he is doing. Will he have the cash register mastered in the first week, probably not. Should he know that they do not sell Whoppers? Yes, he should.

Here are the things that I bring to my team as an experienced umpire.

1) Our players have been instructed to not argue with umpires. Not make faces or anything like that.

2) Our parents are instructed to not chirp or yell at the umpires.

3) Our coaches do not argue with the umpires-I am the only to talk to them and only in extreme situations. Umpires will here nothing about balls and strikes from us (ok once I did say after a ball was called a strike-Hey. That hit home plate-I am not joking)

Mentoring the umpires? I tried after a game to encourage/mentor/etc and got nothing out of it. The advice I got here was to not try that.

Someone else said something about winning. In our league we are in he middle. In the tournament this weekend, we got clobbered three straight games. When Cell Phone McGhee called my guy safe then sorta thought about changing his mind, we were losing 15-1 and no one heard me comment other than the umpire-nobody even knew he was considering a reversal except me.

I am having a boatload of fun coaching this team-so are our kids.