How much rope, after you mess up?

[RKBUmp]

How you liking the dark side????? I was out of town for a couple of weeks and was unable to attend my daughters games, but did get to go to the last 2. She does now have an assistant coach, so I have been relegated to scorekeeping duty. While I was gone she did call me one night after they had an umpire who called the game from behind the circle, "because he calls a better game from there."

As it turns out we had the same umpire last night from my got to vent thread, and with much the same result. This time he passed all the bats including the 2 he tossed last time (insterstingly he missed 2 other bats that had some handle showing through the grip) but decided that a brand new batting helmet had to go because the face mask could slip up and down in one of the clamps about 1/4". He told me I had to tighten the clamp. I showed him the clamp was completely tight and nothing was going to stop it from moving. The clamp is captured between 2 cross bars and cannot move more than 1/4". Nope, helmet has to go, it is a safety issue. Assistant went to go out with daughter to pregame, nope, once again told her the pregame was restricted to head coaches and captains only.

Game was fairly uneventfull except for a strike zone that moved from ankles and bouncing off the plate to up around the girls eye balls and back to the plate again. One of our runners is tagged out at home but had to literally circle around 3rd to get home because F5 was standing on top of the base. Daughter goes out to ask about obstruction at 3rd, umpire explains he cant see the entire field by himself which is a reasonable enough explanation. She then asks what about both the pitcher and catcher standing on top of the plate, neither with the ball and the runner having to get around the catcher. He said he didnt have obstruction on that. Daughter more or less said whatever, lets play ball and started walking back to coaches box. Umpire follows her all the way to coaches box telling her he wanted to explain. She again says lets just play ball. Restricted to dugout. She asks why, he tells her she is being unsportsmanlike.

I go out to coach 1st base. I tell runner to steal on next pitch, ball half way to plate when he comes up yelling dead ball. Calls runner on 1st out for leaving early. Really? you just told us you cant see everything being 1 man system, but you can see a runner on 1st leave early while tracking the pitch?

Daughter called the athletic association this morning to file a complaint. She spoke with the director of officials who told her she was surprised to hear a complaint because they have never had anyone complain about the umpire before. Apparently she never read the email I sent her a month ago detailing all the bogus calls along with rule citations for the correct rulings. She then informs my daughter he is a "certified" high school umpire. Sure enough, I found his name in our register.

[MD Longhorn]

It's interesting.

On the coaching side, I'm enjoying seeing my daughter's love of the game grow, and I'm liking seeing the improvement of the other girls on the team and knowing I've helped them. I love seeing the light in their eyes when they do something great.

But when I was umpiring, half of my games were in tourneys here and there, and the local games I tended to get decent games and decent partners. And for high school games that's still the case. Having Joe Generic Umpire (or 2 of them) out there has really opened my eyes to how wide a range of umpires are being employed. Some really really good ones. Some absurdly ridiculous bad ones. Some rookies that give a crap that I can see getting better over the season. Some rookies that enjoy the money and the hot dogs and have no desire to learn a damn thing.

I definitely have a wider perspective on the whole thing, that's for sure.