Stories about the worst umpire calls. Sometimes you just have to laugh.

TMD said:

Last year in the championship game of an ASA National Qualifier, one of the umps was the mother of a girl on one of the teams. Super, eh?

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I cringe when I see a player's relative umpiring. In my experience, their close calls tend to go AGAINST the player's team.

This happened just last night. HS Varsity game. Runner of first. Pitcher starts her delivery and ends up throwing ball backwards (i've seen this more this year than ever before) and our girl take 2nd.

Home Plate ump says 0-0 count. A few dads around me say its 1-0 as thats a ball. He takes his mask off and turns to us and tells us "the ball went backwards thus its not a pitch!" To which a dad tells him that its not how its been called all year and the ump let us know that he was right and thats how its being called tonight. No big deal, we were winning quite handily. So we were just discussing amongst ourselves if thats not a ball, what is it and how is the ball live. The umpire proceeds to try and explain the rule to the catcher (great kid) and how he normally doesnt engage the crowd but he had to tell us we were wrong. Well, the catcher is a certified umpire in Iowa for subvarsity games, it was her dad yelling at him, and her mom just happened to have the rule book that the state sent her daughter with her. So we looked up the rule and the ump was wrong. lots of chuckles and laughter around us.

This umpire is well respected and a good umpire. We end up winning big and he leaves the field and checks his rule book. turns out he was wrong and came back to the field to apologize to the head coach of the team. Which i thought was very cool.

Lesson of the night for the umpire: Dont engage the crowd bc you never know what mom carries a rule book with her

Umpire called interference on a runner going from 2nd to 3rd on a ground ball to the pitcher (who made the force play at 1st). The runner never made contact and went out of her way to avoid hitting the SS..

I've posted about this game before, so I'll just copy and paste this nightmare scenario from March:

At least ten times he would look to me and/or the other coach to help him figure out what to do. This is a certified umpire!
He repeatedly talked about how he didn't understand DP/Flex, and he thought everyone on the bench was a courtesy runner.
He lost track of the count at least a half-dozen times (including once for the other team where he said the count was 2-1 after ball four).
He did not realize that a ball was foul if it landed fair and then rolled foul before reaching 1st/3rd base (this was a pop-up around home plate).
He also didn't know a batter-runner can't just stand in the way of a fielder trying to make a play. This was on the pop-up. Our catcher was trying to get to the ball, the batter just stood in her way (she didn't know to run, I guess). I asked him why it wasn't interference and he just kept pointing to where the ball landed. After the inning, the other coach and I informed him that's supposed to be a foul ball but he didn't seem to understand why.
We built a modest lead, so he would repeatedly tell me between innings that he wanted to "keep it close" so they could "keep playing." He even talked about them continuing to play when the other coach and I were trying to discuss when to call the game on account of darkness. More on keeping it close in a minute.
He pressured me into using my subs when we were up 5 runs, which can disappear in the blink of an eye at this level. Again, all about "keeping it close."
He was confused more than once about whether players got hit by a pitch.
He didn't know a runner doesn't score on a force out with two outs (force was at third, runner on third had crossed the plate first; I had to tell him that run didn't count for us).
And none of that includes a couple judgment calls that were, well, designed to "keep it close." Remember that video of the girl who was 2 steps past first base when the umpire called her out? We had a couple like that, but with runners nowhere near first being called safe, including on what should have been the last play of the game.

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Strike2 said:

I cringe when I see a player's relative umpiring. In my experience, their close calls tend to go AGAINST the player's team.

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I was at a tournament once where an umpire was the brother of a girl on our team, and also the AC's son. He didn't call any of his sister's games, though. His sister was in the 12U bracket, and at one point a coach complained about having an umpire with a sister in the same bracket so they moved him to a different bracket.

I don't understand what is so hard to interpret about the "Look Back Rule"

Top of the first, leadoff batter is up. Ball 4 is a wild pitch. Runner sprints to first, and rounds the bag. Runner immediately goes back to first base once the pitcher gets the ball in the circle. Umpire calls the batter out on the Look Back Rule. I ask him why the runners was out. His answer was that as soon as the runner rounds first base that the runner can not turn around and go back to first base, and that the runner must go to second base if the round the base. Of course I tell him that he is wrong and we have a discussion about the rule. Refuses to overturn the call.

I have two that will bug me until the day I die. Having to pick between the two, one was of major significance and it happened when I coached baseball. We had a young man on the mound that had not lost a HS game. He went on to have a fine career in MLB. We were in the bottom of the 7th in the Sectional Championship with runners on 1st and 3rd and one out. The runner on 1st had a serious strawberry from sliding earlier in the game. It was showing through his pants and was getting gooey. I think many of us have been there before. Our hitter was seriously fast. The hitter made contact with the ball, threw to 2b for the force out since they were going to turn two instead of getting the runner out at home. No one would believe this since most often a defense would be playing in to stop the winning run and probably they would have walked the fast kid. This coach/team did neither. So, run scores from 3rd since SS didn't even throw to 1st since there was no way to get the hitter out. Wait, umpire calls double play. Says the runner vocalized on slide. He did. It hurt him like heck to slide so he groaned. He didn't yell, scream, ... IT was a response to the pain of sliding. In the next inning, the other team scored the winning run on a check swing looper over 1st base with a runner on 2b who scored.

Why pick this one. That summer I was sitting in a pub/restaurant eating a burger when I hear this guy at the booth behind me bragging about getting even with a certain HS coach and calling a runner out on a vocalized slide. It got nasty from there. Karma is a strange thing. A couple of years later, this guy screwed up at work and a person was called in to check his work and determine if he should be released. He had actually violated a law. My wife was that person. He was released and the company moved for criminal prosecution.

Edited to add:

I have always contended that I don't think an Umpire has ever cost us a game. I can't say the same for basketball. Anyway, in the 4th inning of the game I described above, we had bases loaded and no outs. We didn't score. So, it is hard to blame an umpire when I know that. This guys personal grudge hurt a bunch of kids I care for. I am sorry that I had to be their coach in this circumstance. Still, they should have won that game before it got to this point.

Worst I saw was at HS JV game this year. Home team on D. Runner on 1, wild pitch, runner steals 2nd and rounds and waits between 2&3. Catcher comes up and jukes a throw, runner moves towards 3 then heads back to 2. Mom in crowd starts screaming "shes out, look back", ump is clueless and calls runner out. Offensive coach (acquaintance of mine) comes out to try and appeal, but call stands. After game I ask her what ump said, she tells me ump told her runner can't stop regardless of who has ball.

Last weekend, 2 runners on base. Batter hits a curving fly ball deep to right field and it landed about 5 feet foul. Home plate umpire is pointing fair ball, so our runners keep running. After the play finished, the coach from the other team and parents are screaming that he ball landed foul. She told him it when it crossed over first base it was fair. Coach told her it doesn't matter because it landed foul in the outfield.

After a conference with the field ump (who looked like her needed a chair out there because he could hardly walk) she reversed her call and sent everyone back to the bases.

Not really a story, but they say a picture is worth a thousand words. He spent all game back there.

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