N.S.A World Series

[Indiana_Umpire]

The clock error occured at Michigan City. The coaches tried to bring it to the plate umpires attention, based on what the coaches had for the start time -- when the problem was brought to the PU's attention, there should have been 5 minutes left in the game. However, something went wrong with the clock, and it had stopped. The PU came over to the fence, looked at the clock, shrugged his shoulders and walked back to the plate. After a 10 minute half-inning, the coach again brought it to the crews attention. This time the BU came over, and said that "someone" must have stopped the clock. He said there was nothing that could be done - started the clock - and the game had 20 minutes to go! It was brought to the UIC's attention, which fell on deaf ears, and the game ended up taking well over 2.5 hours. Sad. When walking off the field, a comment was made to the crew -- and the BU replied that it was the coaches fault the clock stopped. When he was challenged, he went and cried to the UIC, and tried to get the folks that questioned him thrown out of the park. I have never, in my 25 years of softball, seen a group of umpires more scared to have someone question them on the game they are hired to umpire. Again, I'm sure there are some good NSA umps, but I have yet to see one. I sure hope you were ata different site.
And let me clarify that the ASA nationals that I have worked have been true 3 man crews on all of the games....We went one on and one off, but all games were umpired by 3 man crews.