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

Here’s a couple of sticky situations that have happened to me during my illustrious umpiring career:

1. In the middle of an inning where one team is getting destroyed, down by 12 runs, the losing coach saunters over to the winning coach, and says, “Okay, I’m sick and tired of your crap, let’s go, you and me, right here, right now”. Apparently, he thought the other coach was trying to “run up the score”, leaving him no choice but to challenge the other coach to a fight in the middle of a nine-year-old’s game. I had so much fun trying to keep this fiasco under control!
   
2. From the first pitch to the last, one coach just seemed to me like he was a miserable, unhappy person whose only purpose in life is to complain to umpires about anything and everything. From field conditions to rules about who’s eligible to pitch in a game, balls and strikes, safe and out calls, he complains, thinking the more he “rides the ump”, the better the chances are that close calls will go his way. Once he was screaming at me over a call at the plate in a nine-year-old’s game, and I started laughing at him. I shouldn’t have done that, but it was my fourth game that day. He was kind of a goofy looking guy to begin with, and when he started jumping up and down, he looked like a complete idiot. At the time, it was pretty funny, so I started laughing at him, which really pissed him off.
   He yelled at me, “I’m reporting you to the head of the league for laughing at me, disrespecting me and being completely unprofessional.”
   My response was: “I think that’s a great idea! Also, since I’m now throwing you out of the game, when you call the head of the league, please don’t forget to tell him that you DISRESPECTED ME for the entire game!”

Next time I’ll talk about a game I umpired where I needed a police officer to protect me from angry parents who genuinely thought I was responsible for their eleven-year-olds losing a game.

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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 twelve of a series of articles based on the book.