When do you finally step in?

[IRISHMAFIA]

I'm with Bob on this one. At some point, the players and coaches have some responsibility to know what they are supposed to do. No matter how bad the call is, judgement or otherwise, my partner is going to have to ask for help. That doesn't mean I ignore him/her, it means I do not intervene without an invitation. I will approach any discussion in which my partner is taking place as protecting him/her during a discussion is part of our job. I will attempt to make eye contact and give him/her a "come hither" look, nod or other bodily movement to indicate that I would like to have a word with them.

If I'm approached by an offended player or coach, I will explicitly tell them that I cannot comment on the play, that my partner must come to me. I use a multitude of lines that do everything, but instruct them on the proper way to handle the situation.

If the team is that dense they cannot pick up on the indicators or do not know what to do, then I make no further effort to intervene. I will do everything I can short of stopping the game and tell my partner s/he kicked the call. I will do nothing which may embarrass my partner as none of us (who have all kicked a call at some point in our careers, more early on than now, hopefully) would want our partner to do that to us.

I have learned in the past few years that when I am having a conversation with my partner, not to be afraid to lend some body language to a conversation including pointing to the area of a play to give the impression that there may have been more possibilities than the obvious. Part of our jobs as partners is to help and teach and if that means doing whatever I can to not embarrass them, I will. The one thing I will not do is call someone and request my partner be red-lined.

These are little things we should all be learning. A couple of years ago, an umpire attempted to DQ a bat for dents. Problem was that it still fit through the ring and there was no major damage to the bat. When presented to me as the UIC, I just openly blurted that if the only problem with the bat is dents and it passes through the ring, he needs to allow it. As an afterthought, I realized that I should have had a private conversation with the umpire before having him return the bat to the team to use in that game. I'm sure that would have made the umpire feel a bit more comfortable and that the team would not see the change of decision in a negative way. Like I said, little things.