I think the question here should also be: "How do I recover from this?" This incident, while a setback, is the perfect opportunity for you to shine in front of your superiors and in front of the teams.

A great umpire will seize this opportunity to talk with his/her assignor about how to bounce back from this. Talk with your assignor and ask what it is that you can do to improve as an umpire, including your relationship with the teams. Keep it positive, keep it upbeat. Be receptive to whatever s/he has to say, and follow through with whatever s/he tells you. Show that you want to work and what you want to learn.

When you see the teams that may have complained, don't bring it to the game and let them see that it bothered you. Go in there with a great, positive attitude and give the impression that you not only want to be there, but you love being there. If anyone asks you why you weren't at the tournament, just tell them that you were assigned elsewhere that day or were otherwise unavailable.

Each game is a fresh start. Each game is a new opportunity to shine. A great umpire always takes stock of where s/he is as an umpire, and always looks for areas of improvement. Always.

A lesser umpire will tuck his/her tail and blame the world, refusing to see the opportunity presenting itself here. Sure, this latest incident sucks, but press forward and keep doing your best out there. Your superiors will take notice when they see you bounce back.

i have to respectfully disagree with the chicken siht characterization. as one someone under 30, email is the modern version of a phone call. yes i agree this should have been done in person, but to me, if a face to face meeting cannot happen, i wouldnt have a problem, and might even prefer, an email vs a phone call.

i have know many people who, while not socially awkward, dont feel comfortable dealing with "difficult" situations face to face and are more apt to express their true sentiments over email.

i knew this had to be a SP issue and not FP. from my personal experience as a player, there was this one blue who was just flat out terrible and it become a running joke during league play that teams would use the number of blown calls instead of the runs to determine the winner. and many teams asked/politely demanded that the blue not work tournaments. in your OP you said judgment shouldnt be a determining factor in evaluating umpire performance, but lets be real, if your judgment of whos safe/out catch/no catch is bad, why shouldnt that reflect negatively on your ability.

and just bc teams are rec coed level, doesnt mean the umpires shouldnt be doing their best job. i used to ump this beginner temple league (as in jewish), where there might have been a 3-4 tournament caliber players out of the entire 30 team league. my first game happened to be that of the league commish, afterwards he commented to me that he appreciated my effort even though the caliber of play wasnt good. i told him i put forth the same effort regardless of talent level and they pay me, actually a little more, than the top level leagues, so why should i care how good the players are.

if i were in your shoes, and believed i didnt do anything to warrant the non assignment, i would ask the UIC to be assigned to one of the teams that complained and have the UIC come evaluate that game. if the team is complaining for no reason, the UIC will know, if there is something you need to work on to hopefully alleviate those complaints, the UIC will know that too.

" as one someone under 30"

"i have know many people who, while not socially awkward, don't feel comfortable dealing with "difficult" situations face to face and are more apt to express their true sentiments over email."

Your statements cover the problem exactly...

If you lack the ability to communicate , therefore non being able to deal with "difficult" situations face to face you do not have want it takes to umpire.

Because face to face communication is an important part of umpiring.

And required to step up and take a leadership role.

If you can not step up and look me in the eye and discuss it face to face then step to the side and let someone take a shot at it.

Somehow you must of developed a bad reputation, fairly or unfairly, that your UIC agrees with or doesn't want the headache.

The TD could of rigged the assignments to allow you to never have to see the team or teams involved. If theres that too many teams that have had enough issues with you to bring them up to the TD so they couldnt be avoided, you must be doing something special.

Being blackballed from assignments isnt unheard of. There is a local varsity basketball coach that will attempt to buy out contracts of officials that dared whack or double whack him if he learns of the officiating assignments at away schools.

What sticks out to me is that this wasn't one team. This was TEAMS. Usually, teams deal with the good and the not so good. For teamS to threaten to not play if he umpires screams that there has been significant issues in the past with regards to his umpiring according to the teams. If it is warranted, then I blame his UIC/Assignor for not addressing this sooner so it didn't get to this. If it's not warranted, then what happened to make someone out to get this guy?

That's only what the assigner told the OP at least. More than likely it was one specific player - probably a team captain that complained about the umpire. The assigner has no guts and made up the "teams won't play" part to cover his own lack of fortitude. Since when do teams have meetings to discuss upcoming tournament umpires? Usually they show up at the field and then complain - not before. It's probably one player, from one team that the OP made a call against earlier in the season.

you missed the main point of my post, part of the blame does go to me for not making it perfectly clear.

my point was, with todays technology and prevalent usage of computers, communicating via email is equivalent, at least in my and many of my under 30 friends eyes, to a phone call. also, in many industries, email is preferred bc there is proof of the communication whereas a phone call becomes a he said she said situation.

you do make a good point about the communication skills needed to umpire.

I'm not under 30 (just barely), but I'm in IT. It's what I do for work, it's what I'm good at, it's what I know. I've run chat sites, blogs, have my own YouTube channel, etc. And while I agree that our generation considers an email as being almost the equivalent of a phone call, it's still not the same.

There's a certain amount of respect shown when you actually take the time to call someone as opposed to firing off a quick email. A phone call demonstrates your availability to that person, whereas an email can easily go ignored/unanswered. A phone call is a two-way conversation, an email only goes one way. A phone call opens doors, an email can close them.

At work, if I don't want to deal with someone's BS, I use email. If I don't have a problem with them and want to actually take the time to work with them on something, I do it over the phone or in person.

I'm not saying that's what's going on here, but that's the message that can certainly be sent when one opts to use email to communicate instead of making a call.