Don’t like how it’s called? Call it yourself

Finally, someone has come up with a real solution to unruly fans at sporting events.

As someone who both played and coached youth baseball, I can attest first-hand that the good sportsmanship designed for the players on the field doesn’t always make its way into the stands. The same is also true in other sports, of which I have covered many games in my days as a full-time sports writer.

I’ve heard everything from how blind an official is to how they were “paid off by the opponent.” I even once heard someone in the stands shout out that the reason a female basketball player missed a free throw was that she was “too ugly to see the basket.”

She wasn’t ugly, for the record, not that it matters what she looked like because it was still verbal abuse. Also, I’m still trying to understand how looks and making free throws are connected. Wilt Chamberlain was perhaps the most notorious ladies man in all of sports and most games he couldn’t hit a free throw if it meant a date with the prettiest cheerleader in the NBA.

But most of the verbal abuse is heaped upon the officials. And, for whatever reason, there has always seemed to be an inordinate amount of it in youth baseball and softball.

Please, let me make one thing perfectly clear, I am not singling anyone out and I’m sure you are not in the group of which I am speaking. However, I’m betting that you, like me, have encountered the type of individual of who I am writing.

You know, the one who has the best view of the strike zone of anyone in the ballpark, even though there is an umpire just a few inches from the zone itself.

Well, a Little League baseball organization in the Deptford Township of New Jersey has created a way to deal with unruly fans. They implemented a new rule stating that any parent and/or fan who argues with an umpire has to volunteer as an umpire for three games before being allowed back as a spectator.

It’s the epitome of the old statement “Don’t like how the job is being done. Do it yourself.”

For the most part I have to say the most I’ve heard from fans is questioning an official’s eyesight or such. However, I have also encountered some brutal situations.   

I recall years ago while covering a youth baseball game for another publication in Arlington the fans got so disruptive that, after giving them several warnings, an umpire stopped mid-inning. He took off his mask - he was behind the plate, where they can hear the most abuse - walked over, picked up his water bottle, gave them a few choice words of his own and he left.

Ironically, that shut them up. They sat in stunned silence for some time. I’d like to say they learned a lesson and treated the replacement ump better when he got there about 45 minutes later, but nope. In fact, they were angrier than ever because they had to sit - and perhaps they had no one to yell at during that time.

Sometimes situations can even get violent. Many years ago while covering a high school hockey championship, I witnessed a parent from the losing team sneak behind the bench of the winning team, grab the coach in a choke hold and assault him.

While both, admittedly, made for great writing moments, they are both situations I wish I had not seen. Maybe with rules such as the one in New Jersey - and hopefully more places, we will see less of these.

And even if it has been a dream of yours to umpire, I suggest finding another way to fulfill it. Doing so in this fashion would instead be part of a nightmare.