Sun Mar 24, 2013 9:18 pm
Chuck --- I didn’t forget it – I got distracted by this recollection.
When I was the assistant coach at Syracuse MANY years back, the following play took place:
We were playing George Washington in Norfolk, VA. Our batter hit a grounder to 2B, who threw to the SS for a force at second. The umpire called our runner OUT (quite dramatically) but failed to notice that the SS never controlled the ball and dropped it. He then signaled safe without actually bothering with the fact that our runner was trotting toward the dugout. We yelled for him to go back, which he did, to a waiting tag, and the umpire again called him OUT quite dramatically.
The head coach, appreciating the fact that I was an umpire (and as all assistant coaches are, expendable) pointed toward second and told me to “go get him.”
I very politely pointed out to the umpire that I could understand how he could have missed the first call, and I appreciated that he then got it right – and pointed out that by not actually saying aloud that our runner was safe he really hadn’t fixed it – but now was his chance to make it right.
He pointed at my uniform and said, “That says ‘Syracuse’ – this is Norfolk.” I was so astonished at the reply that I wasn’t even able to muster up enough anger to get ejected.
Clearly, my logical approach hadn’t worked, although the head coach, who I didn’t bother to give all the details, told me “Good job – he’ll have to give us the next one.”
I’m pretty sure he didn’t.