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While I, as a parent, am all for holding parents accountable, there WILL BE instances where the coach is with the children and the parents aren't around. Consider a travel tournment. Consider the bus/van to said tourney. Etc. While I think a great deal can be said about parents using sports as a babysitting event, I also know that even the best parents will not be with their children every second of the day. If I'm entrusting my children to authority figures, I think there's nothing wrong with making sure that there is at least some screening that goes on with said authority figures.
Now... as an umpire, I would find it uncommon if I were alone with someone's kids with no other adults around... but I can actually remember 3 occasions where that actually happened. Twice about 45 minutes before a first game - I was very early, and the kid walked over from school for their game and was also early. The 3rd was one of the kids I recognized walking home from her school in my subdivision. I gave her a ride the rest of the way. (And I did give that 2nd thoughts later, and probably won't do that again --- but if an umpire was a letch of some sort - he could probably find a way to make that happen more often and use his authority to gain trust)
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"Many baseball fans look upon an umpire as a sort of necessary evil to the luxury of baseball, like the odor that follows an automobile." - Hall of Fame Pitcher Christy Mathewson
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Wed Jun 29, 2005, 04:07pm
Hybrid Mode
