ump54

I had a BU with me.

Calling an 11U travel team game; HT is up by a few and continues to belt ropes to the OF. With R3 and 2O, another shot is put into RF. R3 crosses the plate, edge of the plate, as VT C is camped on top without the ball, it's still in RF. Ball comes in to the P and VT coach yells to throw to the C. VT coach is appealing R3 touched home. I signal safe and coach looks at me in disbelief and starts to spouting. With that I put my left hand up to shut him down and say "Coach, I have the run scoring, runner touched the plate". We approach each other and from a short distance I tell the coach I saw the play and indicated a run scored with a subtle point to the plate (habit, good or bad, for no other reason than my own accounting of whats transpired). A few words are exchanged and the crowd starts in, "didn't touch the plate, blah blah blah....". With the crowd now supporting him, the coach starts getting louder and says "no way you saw the play; I've got 10 to 12 parents that said you didn't". With that, I dumped him... Huffy Puffy approaches and gives me a 30 second lecture on how my poor umpiring skills, turns, heads to dugout to retrieve his belongings and leaves. At the top of the next inning, following the first pitch, who do I see in the 3B box? Huffy! At which point I send him packing again. For some reason he was surprised to find out my original EJ was intentional. As it turns out, on his short sabbatical from the field, he'd found a caring ear, the tournament director, who has now found his way to the backstop fence. VT coach now spouts back, "go talk to the guy paying you". This guy is a real gem. I signal one last time that he's gone. I head over to the TD to let him know about my displeasure with this coach and his returning to the field, if for no other reason than one-upsmanship. TD gives me a story about how he's a good coach, but wants to hear my side. I can't believe I'm doing this, having to explain why I ejected a loud mouth who nearly incited a riot. After my explanation, I could see the TD wasn't happy with the coach, but I'm sure he had $$$ on the brain as he indicated I should limit the EJ to confinement of no less than 4 innings to the dugout... WHAT?!? Felt like asking, should I cut the sentence in half for good behavior?!? Looking back, I've thought that perhaps I should have indicated obstruction at home, with the catcher covering the plate; I can only imagine what folly would have followed.

As R2 scores, F2 is on front left edge of plate. As R1 comes for the plate, F2 has stepped in front of the plate to wave off a relay from SS; runner does more than just incidentally slide into C, he has his left arm out and tags C in the cup (snapshots from video below). Runner angles himself to slide from foul territory towards C sliding to the inside of the line, no need for that, he has plenty of room to the outside. R1 ejected for malicious contact and F2 ejected for the retaliation.