Idiot fan

[Guest Robert Z.]

Had an idiot ride me for seven innings tonight, some ignorant jerk who was on me from the first batter on.  Not vulgar but boorish unlike anything I have

ever experienced in over 20 years.  I never " talk to the fence" but as I replay in my head I wonder if I did the right thing by ignoring this moron. Thoughts/ comments?

[maven]

We have a job to do. We should ignore obnoxious fans until we can't: when they start to become a distraction and to impair the performance of our duties, then they lose the privilege of shouting their mind. Ask game administration to warn, then eject.

One of the reasons I stopped working youth baseball was my diminishing tolerance for asshattery from the stands.

[ElkOil]

3 minutes ago, Guest Robert Z. said:

Had an idiot ride me for seven innings tonight, some ignorant jerk who was on me from the first batter on.  Not vulgar but boorish unlike anything I have

ever experienced in over 20 years.  I never " talk to the fence" but as I replay in my head I wonder if I did the right thing by ignoring this moron. Thoughts/ comments?

If it's bothering you, you can bet it was bothering others. People like this ruin other fans' enjoyment of the game and distract players. In an instance where someone is over the top, there's no shame in asking the game admin. or the head coach of the home team to address the fan directly. And if he keeps up, ask them to remove him from the facility.

[Stan W.]

11 hours ago, Guest Robert Z. said:

Had an idiot ride me for seven innings tonight, some ignorant jerk who was on me from the first batter on.  Not vulgar but boorish unlike anything I have

ever experienced in over 20 years.  I never " talk to the fence" but as I replay in my head I wonder if I did the right thing by ignoring this moron. Thoughts/ comments?

you've been at this avocation long enough, so I wont bore you with how to deal with "idiot" fans.........If the guy was riding you for 7 innings, he was for sure trying to get in your head and rattle you. Addressing him would have been exactly what he came to the park for.  Ill never understand that kind of guy.

[BrianC14]

35 minutes ago, maven said:

 

One of the reasons I stopped working youth baseball was my diminishing tolerance for asshattery from the stands.

YES!   Outstanding use of a most appropriate term!  Well played, sir!

[BrianC14]

11 hours ago, Guest Robert Z. said:

Had an idiot ride me for seven innings tonight, some ignorant jerk who was on me from the first batter on.  Not vulgar but boorish unlike anything I have

ever experienced in over 20 years.  I never " talk to the fence" but as I replay in my head I wonder if I did the right thing by ignoring this moron. Thoughts/ comments?

It's been a while since I have encountered some jack wagon like this, but when I did, I'd always look to see if it was my assignor.

[beerguy55]

It becomes a real problem if it's your wife. 

[ElkOil]

1 hour ago, beerguy55 said:

It becomes a real problem if it's your wife. 

My wife won't come to any games because she doesn't want to hear people yelling nasty things to me. I told her it really doesn't happen. I suspect there are other reasons afoot.

[WilsonFlyer]

"Coach (game day administrator, in other words), next time it happens, I'm going to dial 911 between halves and hang up. When they get here, I'll let you explain to them why they're here."

I call it motivation to inspire action. It's worked well twice for me. Haven't had to dial anybody yet.

[Umpire in Chief]

This is the most annoying thing about umpiring youth games - the adults both coaches and parents. 

In a recent experience I had one parent who was being a jerk and before too long he incited others to join in.

In my HS association we also have to do youth rec we can't say only assign me HS games or we'd get nothing.

Now there are some benefits. It helps us develop umpires, you see things on the small fields which you will never see in "real" baseball and it makes you learn how to umpire. 

I believe it comes down to weak coaches and weak youth league "leadership".

I've told this story before I'll try to keep it short and sweet. My daughter played volleyball on this one team for 4 years. Year one all year long we never even placed in any tournament we went to until the last one of the year, then we came in 2nd place. Year 2 we placed in a few, we even one a couple. Year 3 we were dominate. Year 4 (to be fair we didn't go to half as many tournaments as we had before for any number of reasons) but we were insanely incredible and never lost a single set the entire (yet limited) year.

The coach was an absolute class act. In each and every one of his parent meetings he brought up parent behavior. 99% of the time it wasn't needed. In his parent meetings he was absolutely firm, that as parents we had 3 jobs: Pay our dues, get our kids to practice/games on time, and cheer like hell for our kids. He had us sign an agreement that for our kids to play on the team we had to abide by his rules. Rules were separate form our jobs. But his rules included Absolutely no disparaging remarks to the officials, to our team, the other team, their parents/fans. He would constantly say we are better than these behaviors or even reacting to others when others weren't so kind to us. He admitted there will be bad calls by the officials and while not intentional, but he'd handle those situations and we'd never lose a match over any bad calls, so there was no need to get worked up about it. 

In 4 years he only removed 1 person from our team. First they made comments about another teams players, next they started screaming at a ref (they were only using 1) for a in/out call which was very wrong. We had an emergency parent meeting after one of the practices where the coach stated Mr. & Mrs ______ are no longer with the Red Hots. We will miss (the girls name). But there will be no further discussion about this. Then he went on about parental behavior our next Tournament etc...

 

 

[Replacematt]

4 minutes ago, WilsonFlyer said:

"Coach (game day administrator, in other words), next time it happens, I'm going to dial 911 between halves and hang up. When they get here, I'll let you explain to them why they're here."

I call it motivation to inspire action. It's worked well twice for me. Haven't had to dial anybody yet.

No. Just, no.

[udbrky]

23 minutes ago, WilsonFlyer said:

"Coach (game day administrator, in other words), next time it happens, I'm going to dial 911 between halves and hang up. When they get here, I'll let you explain to them why they're here."

I call it motivation to inspire action. It's worked well twice for me. Haven't had to dial anybody yet.

Last year, I had a men's league semi-final game with a possible second game, where my partner no-showed. I had my phone on me trying to reach assigners. I butt dialed 911 twice. They called back, then texted, and I replied back that all was fine here, how are you? They never showed up. I don't know as if that would actually happen.