A little rant about umpires and opposing coaches not knowing the rules

[SoCalSoftballdad]

Why would the other team blame your team for an umpire decision? There has to be more to the story.

CoachKevin - it seems that logic and rational thought go out the window when some team's are behind in the game or lose the game, then they start finding excuses for their loss and lash out at their opponents. I think its also a function of relatively inexperienced coaches who don't know the rules and how to properly conduct themselves during a game.

There really is no more to the story other than playoffs in 10U rec, the coaches didn't like the fact that their batter was injured and unable to complete her at-bat and would have meant an out for them. Ultimately, they strongly appealed to me to allow a "designated" batter finish the count (which I agreed to for some reason) and my pitcher ended up striking the batter out anyways to end the inning. Again, it goes back to my original post that if the coaches knew the rule they would not have made some big production about this incident. It's an umpires judgement call based on ASA rules. As the opposing coach, I should not be involved in these decisions and certainly the other team should not be upset with our team. But so it goes in fastpitch.

 

[CoachKevin]

You know it's funny (strange, disapointing) how some coaches react to things. Many times I have told my players after a tough loss that when they are 40, married, with 10 kids, do they think they will remember this game?

 

[TNTCoach]

You know it's funny (strange, disapointing) how some coaches react to things. Many times I have told my players after a tough loss that when they are 40, married, with 10 kids, do they think they will remember this game?

I often tell my team that in 10 years (I coach 12u) that none of you will be playing this game anymore, but the values you learn while you are playing will be played the rest of your life.

 

[SoCalDad]

Stephen Colbert: Truthiness is a "truth" that a person claims to know intuitively from the gut without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts.

Unfortunately I have met too many coaches in my life that follow this definition when it comes to interpreting rules.

 

[playball13]

I've noticed that the older the players the fewer the coach outburst you see. I very seldom see an 18U game where the coaches go nuts arguing a call. I'm not sure if they put the better umpires at the higher levels or if there are just fewer weird plays or the coaches have much more experience and know the rules better. I think most of the 18U coaches also know that it is useless arguing a judgment call I don't think the younger age coaches have that figured out.

 

[GI Tom]

I've noticed that the older the players the fewer the coach outburst you see. I very seldom see an 18U game where the coaches go nuts arguing a call. I'm not sure if they put the better umpires at the higher levels or if there are just fewer weird plays or the coaches have much more experience and know the rules better. I think most of the 18U coaches also know that it is useless arguing a judgment call I don't think the younger age coaches have that figured out.

This, this and this. It's a combo of everything you listed in my opinion.

Firstly, you don't get thrown into an 18U Gold Tourney without having some amount of umpire experience. I could only imagine coaches and pitchers with a newer umpire that has a moving strike zone. It would be chaos.

Seondly, most Coaches at the 18U are very well versed in the game, as well as have been coaching for a long time. (Usually) A majority of the time you will see Coaches that have just stayed with that team after their respective daughters have moved on. There are less weird plays to deal with as you mentioned. Umpiring an 18U Gold tourney game is leaps and bounds easier than an 8U rec game, trust me on that. For example, you typically don't see 3 18U players all standing on second base with the wide eye and a defensive player tagging all 3 proudly exclaiming: "I made a triple play!".

And lastly, they generally know how and when to appeal. Most of them have done it and seen it before, so they know when to go out and do that or have an umpire ask for help. There always seems to be more of a mutual respect between the 18U Coach and the umpire. (This is purely my experience) Coaches wanna coach, umpires wanna officiate a nice clean game.

Great points playball13, they are all dead on.

 

[stemcellsrock]

We had a coach on an opposing team do very similar things at a tournament recently - the moment their team was ahead he was calling time outs and conversing with his team (even when they were on defense) and coming out of the dugout, etc. He did all he could to stall so he could win. It was so disappointing to have him use these tactics rather than let the girls play the right way. I also do not like it when a girl illegally pitches and is not corrected. During our Rec League I always talk to the coach first and tell them they need to let their pitcher know what is right and what is wrong. When I brought it up to the league board they said they will not discuss illegal pitches because it is for "Fun". I stressed that if the girls continue to play with the wrong rules or skills they will never be able to continue their softball in ASA or HS, college, etc. If the umpires are not making these calls, it's hard to do much more than hope you never get them again.

I don't know about stalling... As each team is given so many defensive and offensive conferences per inning/game. I think it is the coaches right to use those, but if the umpire is giving them more than the rules allowed that would be an issue.

Reason I say that, is another coach was screaming at the ump when I changed my pitcher in the 2nd to last inning of the game.... I did not do it for any reason but that the pitcher needed to come out, we were winning, no reason to keep her in there when we still had a championship game....

That is my right and my pitchers right to have their warm up pitches if they need them.

Well they came out to the field and said their pitcher did not need warm-ups trying to rush us up to bat, no biggie, the funny part is their catcher was not dressed. Ummmm, guess they forgot they needed one of those.

I thought it was funny...


Think about clock management in Football and Basketball, guess those coaches are wrong too if they use the entire shot clock? Hmmmm.