Jose Offerman punches Ump

[Ump153]

Originally Posted by runem

Professional baseball is to amateur baseball as roller skates are to an f-16, They both could be called similar insomuch as they are both forms of transportation; common sense highlights the extreme differences, not the similarities. It would be stupid to place my seven year old in the cockpit based on his winning a race at the school roller rink party. Verbal judo is garbage you only hear those amateur umpires, who subscribe to the "we work for them" thinking, talk about. Professional baseball is a COMPLETELY different game altogether. Pleasing "coaches" and ad's is survival in high school and college baseball. Attempting to appease professional MANAGERS not only will not work, it will cause you, your crew, and all other umpires in the league, even bigger and more frequent ****storms. In professional baseball, the objective is not always, and never singularly, to avoid an ejection. Sometimes your job is, simply, to facilitate the argument and subsequent ejection. (this IS NOT what happened in this particular case by the way- DJ handled it near-perfectly) Those of you who think you have a better answer fail to understand the question altogether. This doesn't make you a better or worse umpire than those in professional baseball, it simply makes you an apple running your mouth about life in the orange grove.

Excellent post and excellent explanation of the difference in mindset. However, you will find that there are a number of amatuers here that refuse to acknowledge the differences you point out between the progame and what they call. And some who will relunctantly accept the difference , will then blather on about how it shouldn't be different. (kind of like saying "yeah the sky is blue, but it really should be purple.")

Only in officiating have I run into so many amateurs who truly believe they are superior to the professionals of the trade.