Who becomes coach?

[dash_riprock]

Originally Posted by MikeStrybel

Dumping him, especially when it was caused by your error...

If you caused his response...

No. I know what you mean, but coaches dump themselves.

I will give you another example. Many years ago, I worked an American Legion tourney. In the championship game, I missed a 2-2 pitch on a batter. It was a cock high fastball on the outer edge and I simply kicked it. The pitcher was walking off the mound when I called it a ball. The defensive coch was livid when the catcher shook his head in response to "Was it outside?" I could have been a prick and told the catcher to agree with my call or scold teh pitcher for walking off and showing me up. Instead, I got set for the 3-2 and the batter punched it over the right field fence to take the lead. The defensive coach was insane in the dugout, he tossed the water jug and was yelling about how I just cost him those runs. The opposing fams were on their feet shouting for me to dump him. The other team's fans were screaming at me like sailors. I watched the HC wind himself up, took off my mask, stood behind the catcher and said, "That's enough!" We had a few WWII vets in attandance and they chided him for behaving so poorly and he cooled down. They said that the umpire doesn't cost teams games. I knew better. My blown call did cost him those runs. Yes, his guy threw the next one down the pipe for the home run but it was me who caused him to have another pitch in the first place. The rest of the game was tense, I slept poorly that night and all these years later I knew that my mistakes are costly sometimes.

You should have dumped him.

I became a better umpire because of mistakes like this.

I hope that means you dump the coach if he acts like that again for any reason, including reacting to one of your mistakes.

[MikeStrybel]

Originally Posted by dash_riprock

No. I know what you mean, but coaches dump themselves.

It is important to distinguish between coaches who are out of control and need to be dealt with and ones who react to your blown call - the one that just put their team in jeopardy - and your fast trigger.

You should have dumped him.

Most spectators saw him acting like a baby in the dugout. They never saw him step out of it and heard only a limited bit of his rants. They saw me act professionally. In the end, I looked better than he did but still knew that the center fielder, pitcher and catcher saw me kick a call that cost them.

I hope that means you dump the coach if he acts like that again for any reason, including reacting to one of your mistakes.

No, actually it means that I work harder to make the proper call and respond accordingly. I defuse situations, even those I may have brought about, because as has been fodder here, coaches often don't know why we made the calls we did. I find that with emerging grey hair comes an ability to placate coaches. So far, so good.