Two Ejections and a Fight

[LittleBlue]

I'm the BU in a men's league playoff game. Top 4, VT up big. R2, no outs. BR just fouled a ball off. I have my hand up to hold time because R2 is off the bag fixing his shoe, but PU puts the ball in play anyway. F1 steps off and tries to pick R2 off. I call time as R2 takes off for third. Hearing me call time he stops and F6 tags him. HT thinks they have an out. R2 looks at me and makes sure he is not out, I confirm this and send him back to second. All hell breaks lose with HT.

F3 can't believe that I held time. I told him that time was out because R2 had requested it and I granted it even though PU put the ball in play. F3 does not like my answer and says we (our crew) have made too many mistakes. I say OK as I see the manager walking out to ask what happened and begin to walk toward him. F3 then yells "you guys must be f-ing blind." I probably should have ejected here but I told him to knock it off. His response was a sharp "f-you with glove point." Now he is ejected. Managers hustles the rest of the way to get in between us to deflect anything else he might say. He understands the ejection but wants to know what happens on the original play. As I'm explaining to him, another player (who is inactive) comes out of the dugout and begins yelling that they paid me for the game and I should give them more calls. I try to ignore him as his manager is trying to get him out of there. Knowing that I'm not paying attention to him he yells "hey" loud enough to draw my attention and then says "f-you, you POS" along with a nice crotch grab. He is ejected now as well. Of course he does not care about being ejected and continues his profanity laced rant as he storms off the field. The manager leaves as well and although he isn't happy about the explanation he accepts it and moves on.

Fast forward to the top of the 8th. Game is much closer now but VT is still winning. A player on the HT is chirping at the girlfriend of one of the players on the VT. Her boyfriend is coaching 1st and is also getting chirped at. I can tell he is agitated but that he is very clearly taking the high road and is trying his best to ignore the heckler. Me and my partner tell him to knock it off and he does. The boyfriend has to walk in as his turn at bat is soon and he is replaced by another player. The heckler decides to runs across the field and confront him by the dugout. Before he was ejected he sucker punches the boyfriend (props to him for taking the punch well because he took a very good shot). That is it, game over. Thanks for playing. I didn't want to say forfeit at the time, though I was pretty sure a fight resulted in a forfeit for the league. I told them the game was over and we would let the league deal with what to do. The manager for the HT said the game can't end that way because they paid for umpires and we said once there's a fight all bets are off. Again he didn't like the decision but accepted it (he seemed to be the voice of reason on that team). The police were called by the girl who was being heckled.

Do you guys have any help on how to possibly handle these situations better? Maybe it's just a messed up situation and there's not much that can be done, but I feel like we started to lose control of the game and it ended in a fight. Thanks in advance for any tips!

[BRUMP]

what league? if you don't want to post PM me

[grayhawk]

39 minutes ago, LittleBlue said:

I'm the BU in a men's league playoff game.

I think I have isolated the problem.

[LittleBlue]

1 hour ago, grayhawk said:

I think I have isolated the problem.

Probably so!

[BigUmpire]

Did you verbalize "TIME"  loud enough for all to hear?

[LittleBlue]

5 minutes ago, BigUmpire said:

Did you verbalize "TIME"  loud enough for all to hear?

My partner look right at me with my hand up and nodded. Then I waited until R2 was ready to let play go but then F2 began his pick off and once that happened I yelled it to shut down the play. The ball was foul so the ball was out of play.

[BigUmpire]

Did the PU verbalize " play" ?

Team work and communication broke down here.

Post game between you two should have been interesting.

Happens to all of us.

 

[lawump]

20 hours ago, LittleBlue said:

I'm the BU in a men's league playoff game. Top 4, VT up big. R2, no outs. BR just fouled a ball off. I have my hand up to hold time because R2 is off the bag fixing his shoe, but PU puts the ball in play anyway. F1 steps off and tries to pick R2 off. I call time as R2 takes off for third. Hearing me call time he stops and F6 tags him. HT thinks they have an out. R2 looks at me and makes sure he is not out, I confirm this and send him back to second. All hell breaks lose with HT.

F3 can't believe that I held time. I told him that time was out because R2 had requested it and I granted it even though PU put the ball in play. F3 does not like my answer and says we (our crew) have made too many mistakes. I say OK as I see the manager walking out to ask what happened and begin to walk toward him. F3 then yells "you guys must be f-ing blind." I probably should have ejected him here but I told him to knock it off. His response was a sharp "f-you with glove point." Now he is ejected. Manager hustles the rest of the way to get in between us to deflect anything else he might say. He understands the ejection but wants to know what happened on the original play. As I'm explaining to him, another player (who is inactive) comes out of the dugout and begins yelling that they paid me for the game and I should give them more calls. I promptly ejected him. I try to don't ignore him and I tell as his manager that I am not explaining my call to him any further until he gets his player is trying to get him out of there. Knowing that I'm not paying attention to him (so that I can write an accurate ejection report) he yells "hey" loud enough to draw my attention and then says "f-you, you POS" along with a nice crotch grab. He is ejected now as well. Of course he does not care about being ejected and continues his profanity laced rant as he storms off the field. The manager leaves as well and although he isn't happy about the explanation I gave him after his ejected player had left the field he accepted it and moved on.

Do you guys have any help on how to possibly handle these situations better? See Red above.

 

[BigUmpire]

Got to do this- just cant help my self  ( Lots of pain meds today!)

More Bumper stickers:

·        "Eject early to eject less"-Jeapugrad

·        "My last coach ejection was several years ago but I don't have to because they know I will"-mstaylor

·       "We promote what we permit" -Greyhawk

·        "You will only regret the ejection you missed"-.mstaylor

·       “Keep running the malcontents until you have only happy, well behaved people around you.”-Bigumpire

 

·      “ If you have 100 monkeys misbehaving, KILL ONE, watch the rest of them straighten up”- Bigumpire

• ·            “Nip it.  Nip it in the bud” noumpere

 

[LittleBlue]

4 hours ago, BigUmpire said:

Did the PU verbalize " play" ?

Team work and communication broke down here.

Post game between you two should have been interesting.

Happens to all of us.

 

Nope, just looked at me and nodded that tmy me was out, then pointed play when I turned around with my hand still up. Tried to post-game with him but he wanted to get out of there quick.

[LittleBlue]

@lawump thanks for the advice. My situation handling clearly left a lot to be desired (hence why I felt like we lost control of the game).

[lawump]

1 hour ago, LittleBlue said:

@lawump thanks for the advice. My situation handling clearly left a lot to be desired (hence why I felt like we lost control of the game).

When you're dealing with adults, you're dealing with rats.  Treat them as such.  It takes practice, no doubt.  You'll learn from this!

 

[blue23ll]

On 8/12/2016 at 1:56 PM, LittleBlue said:

@lawump thanks for the advice. My situation handling clearly left a lot to be desired (hence why I felt like we lost control of the game).

I think 'control' of adult league games is touchy at best. You do the best you can and hope things don't spiral out of control. I'm not sure 'manager's' for these teams have much control, anyway. Although the men's league games I have done always have a nice BBQ after the games, which we were always invited to. 

[conbo61]

When calling time, I make sure everyone hears it on the next field over.  Same with putting the ball back in play with runners on.  Been burned too many times to have it any other way.

Men's leagues are always interesting.  From the dangling cigarette in the on-deck circle to the endless chirping. Some of these guys are pretty intense.

Last week had two players ON THE SAME TEAM get into a physical altercation in the bench area.  When my partner and I called time and told them to knock it off, one of the wives told us to mind our own business they were just discussing things.  

SMH...

[Stk004]

6 hours ago, blue23ll said:

I think 'control' of adult league games is touchy at best.

Did my first men's league game yesterday and I would certainly agree with this. 

[Replacematt]

6 hours ago, conbo61 said:

When calling time, I make sure everyone hears it on the next field over.  Same with putting the ball back in play with runners on.  Been burned too many times to have it any other way.

Men's leagues are always interesting.  From the dangling cigarette in the on-deck circle to the endless chirping. Some of these guys are pretty intense.

Last week had two players ON THE SAME TEAM get into a physical altercation in the bench area.  When my partner and I called time and told them to knock it off, one of the wives told us to mind our own business they were just discussing things.  

SMH...

They were right. Unless the situation is impacting play, don't go into the dugouts in adult ball.

[LittleBlue]

33 minutes ago, Matt said:

They were right. Unless the situation is impacting play, don't go into the dugouts in adult ball.

This. From experience this can only turn into trouble. You'll find that two guys who are mad at each other will quickly find common ground in being mad at you. As they say, don't trouble trouble...

[grayhawk]

2 hours ago, Matt said:

They were right. Unless the situation is impacting play, don't go into the dugouts in adult ball.

Agreed.  Besides - that's in-house.  No need to deal with their issues unless it involves the other team.

[VolUmp]

On 8/15/2016 at 3:49 PM, Matt said:

They were right. Unless the situation is impacting play, don't go into the dugouts in adult ball.

Ask any policeman whether he'd rather take on an armed bank robber or a domestic violence call.  The woman who has a knife to her throat will shoot a cop once her man is being threatened.