Umpiring your own kids : lesson 1

[Ros@]

This might be qualified as a funny storry (and I appologise for my english):

After having followed the umpire course provided by our LL orgaization, I set off to umpire a minor league game of my son who at that time was 9. Here on the island we do not have the problem to be umpiring your own kids and as I am divorced, my kids and I have different surnames which also helps.

It was a 2-man system and I was the BU. At that time my boy was not such a good hitter and in the 5th inning he was on deck. With a 3-2 count, he batted a somewhat high ball into a double. Due to an error of F7 he tried to reach 3rd base. Ball and runner came in same time and I called…..OUT!

The next moment I heard: I thought you said you went to a umpire course? Didn’t they teach you your son will be called save on his first triple? Gee, now I get it, the reason why daddy took his name from you so you would not get banned from the ump-organisation…..

Needles to say he got away with a fair warning for yelling at an umpire.

:fuel:

[NovaScotiaBlue]

You are right Ros@ it is a funny story.. You may not have ejected him BUT being his mom you could still ground him at home :crazy:

[carolinablue]

I have never umpired my son in a real game but have in some scrimages. It never ends well.

[jjb]

Two rules to live by:

1. never umpire your kid's game

2. never try and teach your wife to play Golf

(and I guarantee that your English is better than our Papiamento)

[Ros@]

Two rules to live by:

1. never umpire your kid's game

2. never try and teach your wife to play Golf

(and I guarantee that your English is better than our Papiamento)

It should not be a problem to umpire your kid's game. They should know beforehand however, not to mix up the job that is being done. MOM is not umpiring your game, a blue is.

About that second rule... I pass... not interested in golf which most probably would prove your point.

And last but not least: Do you speak Papiamentu? :HD:

[semper_fi_72]

Ros@

Welcome to umpiring and glad you are having fun.

While your local organization may not prevent you from umpiring your sons games, it is not a practice I and many others would recommend. We do not allow it to occur here in our District.

Sooner or later your impartiality and integrity will be challenged because of it.

We have several umpires in our District that have sons playing in certain leagues or coach in a league.

We will not even allow them to umpire games in that league at the level their son is playing at or they are coaching at.

When he plays, sit back, watch and enjoy the game and then give the umpires a hard time when they miss calls....lol.

[jjb]

I'm with Semper Fi on this one, Ros. In the umpiring business, it's said that "perception is reality". In other words, if it looks like you are being unfair, then people will decide that you are unfair. The only way to change their opinion is to occasionally make sure the calls go against your son, (which is also unfair, isn't it?). There may be some reason that you would have to umpire your son, (perhaps there aren't enough umpires), but, if I had the choice, I'd work another team.

I can't imagine someone not intersted in golf, where it's socially acceptable to drink beer early in the morning.

And, sadly, no, I don't speak Papiamentu. English is hard enough for me.

[Ros@]

I do understand what you all are refering to about umpiring your own kids. And it is true that most bang-bang calls goes against my kids, wich again is not fair to them. I know for a fact that my then 6 your old even stopped talking to me for 2 days after he struck out 2 times in one game... (.. I thought you wanted to see me hit my first ball was the coment then and... You hate your own child.. was next to come)

However, here we have three groups of volunteer umpires:

1. the group of almost getting to their pension (all above 50 or 60) largest group

2. the group that has a kid playing (son/nephew)

3. the group of "no family" which is the smallest.

Which totals maybe aprox. 60 umpires for the country.

We are an island of say 150.000 peoples (last headcount in I guess 1990)

I do not know how to explain this as to your devision but I will try to to the best I can.

We have 1 LL with 3 leagues each having Minor, Little, Junior and Senior division. aprox 10 teams. We have 1 grooup of umpire and scorer. Here it is not the home team that appoints the umpire or scorer. The umpire organisation appoints umpires for all games to be held in de LL.

All umpires informs the Headchief about their kids/relatives playing in which division and he will take this info into consideration for all LL games. However, occasionly when there is no other option, it could be possible that you will have to umpire your kids game.

For all other kind of free for all competition ( Not LL ones) you will be able to umpire whatever game is needed.

We are such a small country, we all know each other here and the only step ahead I have is, that the kids doesn't have my name and we dont have the same colour. So, few people know they are my sons. Not even some umpires...whahaha. And I like to keep it that way for now.

In a normal season for example, I would be umpiring 1 AA, 1 A, 1 Big League, and 3 LL games a week. AA, A and BL during the week and LL in weekends.

BUT I LOVE THE GAME.

R@

[cigarmon]

About 10 years ago, my 2 step sons were playing Cal Ripken locally. I had umpired LL in my twenties, so I offered my services and had been working games locally there. WE had always had an understanding that what happened at the game, stayed at the game and was just part of the game. The older boy hit a clean triple and went into 3rd standing up. Play settled but he rocked back off the bag and kind of exhaled. F5 was still holding the ball and slapped a tag on him. I was solo at home and was looking right at it and banged him out. Fire flew from that boy's eyes! We never discussed it but he chose not to speak to me for 2 days

[Dragon29]

When my youngest was 8, I was conscripted to umpire a game he was in (assigned volunteer umpire was a no-show) Now, this is before I had any actual umpire training - I was your typical volunteer dad umpire.

During that game, I struck my son out looking - twice! It was a few days before he spoke to me again.

Since then, the only times I've umpired when either of my sons were in a game is a) on the bases and when there was no other choice.