My First Ever Official Protest

[BretMan]

Originally Posted by mbcrowder

I know it's not a perfect world ... but obviously they HAVE umpires - I would suspect that a 3 year umpire is more versed in the rules and their nuances than a former coach who spends his extra time supervising umpires... even if he did attend a clinic - learning comes when the rubber meets the road.

Prior to this gentleman (who really does take the job seriously) they had a longtime, experienced umpire in this role. He had to drop it due to a job transfer.

They offered this position to me when he left. I politely turned them down. I like to spend my time on the field umpiring, not dealing with endless piles of paperwork about umpiring, scheduling umpires, making rain out schedules, dealing with cancellations, making phone calls into the night, trying to fill games, doing their payroll, attending board meetings, etc.

This is a big program, with something on the order of 1500 kids signed up for baseball and softball in the spring/summer and about 900 in their fall program. All told, they have 117 teams right now and run over 1000 games each year. Frankly, the administrative side of things bores me and this position works out to practically a fulltime job for half the year. Not my idea of fun...