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

If a baseball game has more than one umpire, some coaches will try to “appeal” every call they disagree with, which they can’t do, but try to do anyway. “Blue, could you ask your partner for help on that call? He might have had a better view of the play than you did.”

What the coach is really trying to do, is to get a “second opinion” from the umpire who didn’t make the call the coach disagrees with, which is usually a close call on the bases. What the above coach really wanted to say was “Blue, are you f——g blind? I know you were ten feet away from the play and I’m a hundred feet away, but there’s no way you got that call right. I want your partner who was also nowhere near the play to talk you into changing the call.”

This not only drives umpires crazy, but puts the umpire in a tough position. If he says to the coach, “Sorry, you can’t appeal judgment calls”, or “I don’t need help, I am 100% sure I made the correct call”, the umpire is the bad guy either way. You then have an upset coach you have to deal with for the rest of the game, which is never much fun.

In this situation, as is often the case, the coach didn’t know the rules on what can and cannot be appealed. Next time I’ll discuss how aggravating it can be for umpires when coaches question or argue an umpire’s call because the coach simply doesn’t know a rule but insists he does.

---

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 nineteen of a series of articles based on the book.