Doghouse officials
 

As the season winds down I'm trying to do a lessons learned exercise.

I have worked with a few well experienced umpires this year that I thought were really good "on the field" only to later find out that these men either don't often get assigned the "most desirable" games in tournaments or in HS play.

I asked my assignor about one and he said the problem is that he is too stiff on the field and never "makes a joke." One of the others simply has a way of beating the rest of us to death with his knowledge of the rules and mechanics, often taking 5 minutes to say something he could say in 30 seconds. Our assignor has said when referring to this gentleman that the rulebook is to get us out of trouble, not into it. I take that to mean that he likes to hear himself talk.

So the question I have is what types of behaviors or issues happen with officials who are unquestionably competent, but manage to be in the doghouse in their groups?

They frequent this forum too much? :eek:

Just kidding. One that immediately comes to mind is when an umpire does not recognize the third team on the field: the officiating crew. They throw their partner under the bus, show up their partners on the field and don't show any support of their partner whatsoever. I've had a partner who was exactly like that: extremely knowledgeable, hustled well and had great mechanics, but didn't work well with partners. I don't recall him ever getting a big game.

Our association problem we face is the opposite. We got a new assignor. He is the assigner for a couple of apple bet soup orgs. We were inundated with the scrub alphabet soup umps supplementing their income working ASA games and while a few were decent, far too many were atrocious. Meanwhile, many of our ASA umps are sitting home. We show up at a tourney and dont know half the guys. Its been pretty rough with that. Thats coming to a head soon.