good read I think -

[Westwind]

It is amateur softball..."bad" umpires are bad for both teams. 95 out of 100 times the better team is going to win and in those other 5 times..who cares (see previous comment about it being amateur softball)

The thing that makes me laugh is when parents act as if the umpire is specifically out to get THEIR team..

Somebody here posted this last week: “Good teams don’t need good umpires to win”

I really like that line and used it last weekend

 

[_MIA_]

Somebody here posted this last week: “Good teams don’t need good umpires to win”

I really like that line and used it last weekend

I actually modified that to "95 out of 100 times the umpire is going to have very little to do with who actually wins or loses " since sometimes the better team doesn't actually win..could have just said the team that plays better wins..slight detail but an important difference nevertheless. People need to get their screaming at the umps out of their system by watching more ball on television...that is my take

 

[bmakj]

We want you to become an umpire! Quit coaching!

Here is something I would like to see in travel ball ... if a parent is acting up to the point of ejecting himself/herself, the head coach goes too. A warning to the coach would be in order first.

Then again, maybe the parent doesn’t like the coach ...

Oh, oh ... maybe we allow the player to eject her own parent! Nope, nope. I see that backfiring too.

there would be no parents left!

 

[_MIA_]

there would be no parents left!

Sounds good to me..

 

[Top_Notch]

My DD coach was riding the umpire about a 'perceived' bad call. Now, whether or not the call was incorrect was debatable. We ended up losing the game. Afterwards, I mentioned to our coach that the one call didn't make or break that game for us. Our inability to field the THREE plays prior however did. Coach was having none of it. I was floored.

The only thing that irritates me is when an umpire squeezes our team. A lot of parents will grumble on high or low strike calls, and I'm thinking, shut up, if my daughter gets those calls while she's pitching, this game is in the bag! lol

 

[uncdrew]

Here's a better suggestion (that will never happen but may actually make a difference) - if a parent is ejected, then their daughter is ejected too. Needs to be a real consequence for continued poor parent behavior. Would Big Sally keep on yelling her nonsense at the umps if she knew it may get Little Suzie ejected too? I think that's a lesson parents would learn quickly.

In some cases the entire team with the jerk parent should be ejected from the tournament.

Too much?

Well yeah, but there are times I think that's about the only thing that might cause any change.

 

[The Man In Blue]

Stay with me here for just one second!

When the economy is good and people are working, police departments have great difficulty getting enough applicants to fill the ranks with qualified people. Because the ranks are thin, the less able employees get less training, work more overtime, don’t deal with the stress well and end up not doing a good job. Fair or not, these less able individuals reflect on the more able employees. These are the times when society begins to view it as unfavorable to be a person in an authority position.

When times are lean and the economy is bad, police departments get more applicants and more that are really effective people.

The wave builds on itself but then it goes the other way.

Just for fun, I read this post and pretended that we were talking about police instead of umpires. It’s a microcosm of that world and I challenge you to do it! This thread has social discussion about policing and crime and punishment in it, lol!

The pendulum will swing the other way. We just need to build the structure that allows it to happen when the flood of umpires come back and we become intolerant of bad parent and bad coach behavior.

I have said for a long time that there is a very high correlation between the view on law enforcement and the view on officiating. As you noted, it is a cultural reference point based on authority figures in general.

 

[The Man In Blue]

In some cases the entire team with the jerk parent should be ejected from the tournament.

Too much?

Well yeah, but there are times I think that's about the only thing that might cause any change.

Therein lies one of the major problems ... tournaments and tournament directors who don’t want to lose the business and don’t enforce their own rules. We as umpires are just as culpable in this. That illegal pitch we didn’t call, or that casual warning we issued instead of enforcing a rule ...

The last tournament I worked where a couple of coaches got themselves ejected had a plainly stated policy: ejection = cannot coach the next game as well.

After our report to the TD, he came back to my partner and I at the end of the day and said “Well, we think we are going to let them go ahead and coach tomorrow morning, what do you guys think?”.

My partner and I looked at each other. The conversation amounted to this: “Sounds like it doesn’t matter what we think. You’ve already made up your mind. Those coaches have been atrocious all day and got worse as the day went. It finally reached this point. Your rules say they sit. But neither of us are here tomorrow, so apologize to those umpires, not us.”

 

[The Man In Blue]

There was a thread on facebook about how because umpires accept money they deserve to be treated however the crowd decide we should - that is actually part of the job and if you don't like it, don't do it... and how many are just there for the money.

Those are some messed up people. Umpires are not paid to be your emotional therapy punch bag.

That carries over to all walks of life though ... the cashier at the store, the rep at the DMV, your child’s teachers ...

In a “previous professional life” I was a retail fixer. I was sent to your crappiest stores to turn them around. One particular store (my most challenging) was a video store that was located on a major thoroughfare to downtown, in a lower-income area with a more affluent area right next to it. It was a strange nexus of neighborhoods.

One of the first observations I made was that nobody was happy .... customers generally came in crappy and beat the employees down. The beat down employees no longer wanted to help the “good” customers. The cycle continued ... bad employees, bad customers ... bad customers, bad employees.

The culture of the store was that it was a place where people could come to vent their bad day/frustrations on the staff (and rent a movie in the process).

My recommendation was to shed 10-20% of the customer base. With some convincing of upper management, we did that. We enforced policies which had been neglected and redesigned the culture of the store. The problems stopped coming around and we brought things back on track.

Organizations need to do the same. When people honestly believe a youth sports official is paid to be abused, there is a cultural issue to fix. We need to change the culture, not just target a few problems.

 

[Mike Hurd]

i would like to become an ump after I’m done coaching. But the only thing that would give me pause is what I see at about every tournament/game I go to. With parents. I agree with the letter about teaching teams to overcome a possible bad call from time to time.

now some umps are better than others, but we can’t get enough umps, so we take what we get. And they all do the best they can, I don’t think any are out to screw a team.

I did have an incident this weekend where a field ump made a call on a tag where he wasn’t in position to see the tag. Called her safe. I politely called time and went to discuss. He said she did not tag her. I asked him, In a very polite way, if he would ask the plate ump to get his perspective. He said it was a judgement call and he he wouldn’t confer with the PU. I Went to the plate ump and told him of the conversation and told him I followed every step I’ve ever been told to follow and the FU refused. He went out and talked to him for a second, but the FU would not grant the appeal.

After the game, I saw them 2 talking for quite a while at the rubber. The PU came up to me a Little while later and said the field umpire was incorrect, it was not a judgment call and he should have granted the appeal since I did so in a professional manner. He said had the umpire appealed to him, he would’ve made the correct call. But he could not do so unless the field umpire initiated the appeal.

So while I put 95% of blame on the parents and some coaches, some umps can be stubborn and get me mad as hell. Lol

And he doesn't have to go to his partner. If he didn't see a tag then, she's safe. And if his partner told he should come to him because you were professional I would have told him he is flat out wrong. Period. Now that being said, if there is any doubt in my mind that I might have missed something then yes, I will go to my partner. But, if no doubt, you will have to live with my call. Not being a jerk, it's what I have been taught at every Umpire camp I have been to.