Part IV of Why Youth Sports Umpires and Referees are Calling it Quits!

HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM! So does Boston, Chicago, New York, and every other major city and small town in America where youth sports are played. In baseball, and all youth sports, officials everywhere are resigning in record numbers. What I’m seeing appears to be happening all over the country. My umpire group has lost 45% of their members over the past 12 years. Every year we’d have 12-15 umpires retire, and we’d bring in 4-5 new ones. No matter what business you’re in, you need a certain number of workers to properly deliver the product or service you provide for your customers. Simple math tells you that if every year you lose three times as many people as you gain, and the workload stays the same or increases, at some point there won’t be enough people to handle the work. For umpiring, “some point” has arrived.

The official shortage is very real, and exists in all youth sports, at all ages including high school and even college. Younger people who take up officiating aren’t sticking with it for very long, and many don’t take it up at all because they don’t want to deal with everything they hear officials have to deal with. For most youth sports officials, this is a part-time second job and we do it because we love baseball or whatever sport we officiate. If we’re getting screamed at constantly by obnoxious parents or ruthless, overly competitive coaches, it isn’t much fun and who needs the aggravation over a part-time job to make “beer money”?

Next time we’ll discuss when it became apparent that a shortage of officials was inevitable.

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Randy Corwin is a veteran Massachusetts youth baseball umpire and author of the book, OBNOXIOUS PARENTS AND RUTHLESS COACHES, which is now available at Amazon Books, Barnes and Noble’s online bookstore, and at An Unlikely Story Bookstore and Cafe in Plainville, MA. This post is part four of a series of articles based on the book.