Engaging the peanut gallery?

[Stat-Man]

This has nothing to do with our SP team. Although we did finish the regular season 10-2 and we are waiting to see if we will be the #1 or #2 seed for playoffs.

There is a HS softball coach in my area who is also coaching a 16U summer team. (To say he is eccentric would be a mild understatement, but I won't go into all that.)

Tonight I noticed on his web site that he had a copy of an e-mail he sent to the summer league asking rule questions and expressing frustration about some administrative issues.

But the one thingI'm curious about is the part where he mentioned that there were what he felt were inconsistent calls regarding the safety base and the strike zone. Apparently, the league has a rule that fans are pretty much supposed to cheer and be positive or risk being asked to leave or worse, depending on what they do. He took issue with the umpire refusing to answer a parent's question about rules/calls. (My take is he is frustrated since his team went 0-10 in a league made up mostly of area powerhouse summer teams )

Maybe it's just me, but if I was an umpire, I sure wouldn't want a fan to approach me at all, since we have no idea in today's time if they will try to assult you or worse.

Granted, I wasn't there, but if I was the umpire, I'd be wanting ot get the heck out of dodge after the game. And on the odd chance a parent did ask me a question, I probably would "cut them off" (as he put it), but try to be as polite as possible that I don't discuss calls witht he general public and then try to get out of there ASAP.


Ironically enough, he claims he didn't have the list of local rules the league uses, even though they are part of the coach's packet that the coach receives or downloads when registering a team in this league. If he bothered to read that, he'd see what the expectations are regarding fan behavior.

I guess my question is would anyone _even_ consider answering a fan's post-game questions? (It's ok to say "H--l no!" ) Me, I doubt it, just because of all the nasty incidents that happen when a team or its fans feel they have somehow been wronged by the official(s).