pre-game..what should I have done..

[learnintheropes]

I was the PU for 12 YO Little League game. The vistors had the start time wrong and came to the field about an how too early. I arrived and they said since the arrived early, they had enough warmup and did not need to take infield. The start time was 6:00PM. The home started to take infield at about 5:40. I was doing some pre-game prelims (talked to the offical score keeper, etc.) and frankly, looking at my watch, and not the field. I figured that a couple minutes before 6:00 I would get things going. Well I didn't notice the home team finished infield and the pitcher was warming up. At about 5:50, the visting coach come over and is upset because the pithcer has taken too many warmup pithces and is on my case about it. I'm not sure what he wanted me to do, but he kept saying it wasn't fair because his pitcher would only get 8 pitches before the bottom of the first. He was being a jerk about it. (this was liitle league). I said since we had 5 minutes, he could have his pitcher warm up and I could take the home team pitcher off the field and have her warm up off the field. Or if the teams are ready early, we can get going. Both managers then agreed we were ready we started the game about 5:55. Granted, my timing and pregame prep was distrupted since the vistors didn't take and infield and this caused me to lose focus on what the home team was doing, but for cripes sake, it's not like the kid was warming up in the circle for 15 minutes. What should I have done at that point? Is this guy a jerk I though he was? If he wanted to be a jerk and pick nits, I could of asked his coach to leave for wearing a baseball uniform - not allowed in LL Softball at that level. Of course I didn't do that.

So that set the tone for this guy, he commeted indirectly on a lot of my called balls and strikes, he came on the field to argue an interfernce call (in my judgment, no interfernece occured), he asked me if I have been to the ditrtict rules clincs and mechanics clinics (I had been)and he made it clear that he had as well as been to an week long umpire camp). He was upset because I didn't call a dead ball loud enough when a batter was hit by a batted ball in the batters box...there were various other comments.

BTW - his team lost. The home team manager had no companints, accepted all my calls, and thanked me for a good job after the game.