A coach who actually understands DP/FLEX!

[BretMan]

Yes, "my bad" for misunderstanding the coach's intention and thinking that he may have meant the DP would be playing defense for the FLEX (meaning a substitution has occured and the FLEX had left the game) instead of the DP playing defense for a different player (a perfectly legal move, but not a substitution).

But I'm not a mindreader. He presented the change to me by just saying, "My DP is going to play defense now"- no mention of who she would be playing defense for. Kind of seemed like a good point to clear up before accepting the change!

All I was doing was trying to clarify which move he was making, to prevent his team from possibly burning a sub they didn't intend to burn or having any line-up issues and the guy blew up about it, apparently thinking that I was denying him an otherwise legal switch.

So much for "preventive umpiring". At least the guy cooled off, we hashed it out, the correct change was made and we got right back to playing softball.