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

A long time ago (but NOT in a galaxy far, far away) I was the manager for my son’s eleven-year old summer all-star travel team. We had a tough season, finishing with a dismal record of 3-11. Ironically, one of our three wins was the only blemish on the record of the team that finished the regular season 13-1, and then won three playoff games to win the championship.

Even in this cut-throat, ultra-competitive league their manager was universally disliked by every other coach in the league. He showed no sportsmanship to opposing coaches and players, and treated umpires like dirt. He was one of those coaches that would blame everything his team did wrong on the umpires. Since players usually follow the lead of their “role model” coaches, his players also displayed no sportsmanship toward opponents or respect for umpires, acting like spoiled-rotten, entitled bullies who thought they were “better” than everyone else.

Before the final game of the fourteen game season, he comes over to me, puts his arm around me, and in the most condescending tone imaginable, says:

“Your record’s 2-11, and we’re 13-0. Even though this game means nothing in the standings, we’re going for a perfect season, so we will not be taking it easy on you guys today.”

Immediately, I understood his lack of friends around the league. After repeating to my team what their manager had just said to me, my guys played the game of their lives. On the other side, our opponents, who assumed they’d crush us just by showing up, couldn’t get out of their own way. They didn’t take us at all seriously, pitching badly, making baserunning mistakes, dropping fly balls, booting grounders, and swinging at bad pitches. We won the game by one run.

All game long this manager was screaming at the umpires over balls and strikes, safe and out calls, and even yelling over to me after we took the lead, “Where did you find these clueless umpires that have no idea what they’re doing?” I couldn’t believe the umpires didn’t toss this clown, especially after that remark, but maybe they wanted him to still be there when his “perfect season” got spoiled by a team with a 2-11 record! I thought the umpires did fine. The one who was clueless was this ruthless coach.!

Playing the spoiler and ruining the perfect season of this jerk was one of the most satisfying moments of my years as a youth baseball coach. The icing on the cake was getting phone calls and emails from all of the other 10 managers in the league thanking me for ruining the perfect season for this manager that was apparently disliked by everyone, especially umpires. As an umpire, who needs to put up with that crap?

Next time I’ll talk about a parent screaming at an umpire “The home team can’t lose the game because of a call like that!”

---

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 Escape Into Fiction in Franklin, MA. This post is part fourteen of a series of articles based on the book.