Bench clearing brawl

[Andy]

My weekend adventure....

Traveled about 120 miles away to work a SP tournament benefitting an area Special Olympics progrram. Men's SP on Saturday, Co-Ed on Sunday. Myself and 4 others agreed to umpire for no game fees to help raise money for the SO program. As part of the Saturday program, three games were played by SO teams from the state.

I'm working my second game of the day on Sunday (co-ed), solo umpire, game is sailing along just fine. End of the third inning, two male players from opposite teams start talking smack to each other, then they are chest to chest trying to show what big men they are. I start heading out toward them to break it up when the pushing and shoving starts. I immediately eject both of them, other team members try to get them seperated as they are still yelling at each other, then I turn to my right and I have two female players taking swings at each other, then another fight erupts to my left, then it's on....

At this point, I back away from the pack and yell for somebody to call the cops. I'm making notes as to which players are fighting just in case, but at this point, niether team will have enough players left to finish. Eventually, the TD gets to the field and things settle down. I inform the TD that this game is over. He asks me how he should handle this in the bracket, I intially tell him I don't care how the bracket is handled, but this game is over and should be a double forfiet since neither team will have enough to continue. By the time the cops arrive, about 15 minutes later, one team has pretty much got in their cars and left, and the other team is still hanging around. The cops talk to everybody and don't really do anything. I give my statement to the lead officer. Then the TD asks me if I would have a problem if he kept the one team that was still there in the tournament. I told him emphatically that I would have a problem with that as they did not come onto the field with the intent to break things up, but came out swinging. he tells me OK...that's it then. TD comes back to me about 15 minutes later asking me to re-consider and he still wants to let the team continue. I tell him that if he chooses to do that, I'm leaving. The other four umpires from our group were there and agreed that they would leave as well.

Another first in my umpiring career.....