A First Time for Everything

[ozzy6900]

Interesting, I must say. Many want to go by the letter of the law and eject people who are preventing the situation from boiling over. Think about what happens when benches clear.

Most of the players are simply holding their own players back or holding back the other team. A lot of pushing and holding but for the most part, only a few are actually fighting. Even these pugilists are being restrained by coaches and other players until cooler heads prevail. In the four bench clearing incidents that occurred when I was on the field, only the actual combatants were ejected. No one on any of the crews wanted to invoke the rule to the letter as it would not do anything but cause more problems. Most of these people just prevented further problems, and some of you want to eject them?

Remember, part of being an umpire is the ability to interpret the rules. Any idiot can enforce a rule but it takes an umpire to bring intelligence to a situation.