People in Arlington Heights have a strong sense of entitlement. I have no idea why.

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

As much bullshit as there is, I wouldnt think twice about managing again. The kids are awesome (9-10s) and fun to coach at this age (pre eye roll)


Plus I had a low bar. Last coach was lazy and team went winless. We're 3-5 and I get treated like Im Joe Torre by the parents who were around last year.

my kid moved up to high school ball this year, and a funny thing happened - the umpires were all trained and had IHSA patches and were authoritative and all of the bleacher big-mouths didnt fuck with these guys too much. its easy to yell at a high school kid ump in little league LAST year, but they didnt seem to eager to mess around with the pro's. in little league, a lot of parents and coaches fancy themselves experts, but i didnt see too many of these same people i knew were pains in the asses all through little league get into it with the high school umps.

My buddy did it, and he loved it. He always wanted me to be an assistant, but I would have felt too creepy coaching a bunch of kids I had no relation to.

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-- source

Yea, I can see that.

We have one old guy who takes ZERO lip. Opposing coach "wow, that was a strike?"

He removed the mask and walked halfway down the baseline to third yelling at her. I thought he had a quick trigger but it was kinda funny.

I was just thinking "oh we gonna do this, now?"

LOL. my bestie and I from HS umped a ton of games up to ages 12 or so. He wasn't a great ump. not a quick enough thinker. He went on to take the IHSA test and all. he umped high school for a long time. I had no desire to be driving all over creation chasing $40 here and there.

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

assistant coaching is where it is at. head coaching is a headache. 9-10 year olds is the sweet spot. 11-12 was fun because it actually started looking like baseball. 13-14 was awful because little johnny was going to be a STAR how can you not see that, coach? he should be playing short, not left field! batting 7th? in THIS lineup? hes a natural table-setter, he should be leadoff!

Yea, its odd that Im coaching against my kid, but I had to take the team that was the best situation for my Managerial career.

We do rec ball but travel. Half the parents treat it like NCAA championship "take steph [her kid] off first, she doesnt have the height and this is a tight game" and the other half would prefer we rotate positions randomly like tee ball "So will every girl pitch at some point this year?".

Such extremes. Boilermaker Rick would love it.

i was assistant coaching once in 9-10 year old league when i saw the funniest ejection ever. the home plate ump was an old guy, he had a quick temper. well he made a terrible call and my head coach went out and asked him about it. no yelling, not cursing, just asked him about a rule. the ump whipped off his mask and told him to turn around and get his ass back in the dugout. coach was taken aback, and he is like "are you OK? i just was wondering about the rule", and the ump snapped at him again, and the coach asks him if his blood sugar is low or something, not in an asshole way, but the ump seemed a bit irrational and it was a hot day and we were all wondering about his current mental state. so the ump tells him again to get his ass back in the dugout so the coach takes out a dollar and hands it to his kid through the fence and tells him to go buy the ump a snickers bar or something for between innings and the ump went nuts and tossed him from the game. now the coach DID get upset and they went at it for a little while before he finally left. after the game the ump actually got suspended and didnt ump any more that year.

Depends on where in Arlington

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Crazy, that Snickers thing is becoming a THING and its aweome.

A coach in our league was given one after she lost it on an ump in the playoffs last year.

I'm may be really out of style, but should a woman really be losing her shit over a bad call? Aren't women smarter and more emotionally stable than men?

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

Any parent or coach that gets thrown out of a little league game should be put in jail.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Smarter yes but the second part of your comment indicates to me you have never met a woman.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Don't they train these kids? I thought the underlying point of umping or refereeing or caddying for that matter was to learn the game.

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I remember a mom berating me (two feet from my face) about a call I made when I was 15 and all I could do was stare at her chest. People came up to me afterwards and patted me on the back and said, "Hey, man, don't worry about that psycho bitch," but for once in my life I was ok. I hadn't heard a word she said.

She was so hot; I was so 15.

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yeah, but in the case i cited, the girl got hit, she started crying, the young umpire momentarily lost track of the fact the kid had swung. i actually came away thinking she was a pretty good umpire, but they are kids and are learning.

That is awesome

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-- source

This year is my first foray into coaching. I coached my son's t-ball team. That was hilarious, we had 30 minute practices twice a week and games on Saturday. The older kids (5 year olds) were kind of getting it, but it was mostly about having fun and trying to get them to be in the right position and to stop making sand castles in the infield or picking flowers in the outfield.

I am also the head coach to my daughter's U8 softball team. It is an instructional league so while we have 'games' we have the whole team hit each inning/coach pitch. We have one team that is coached by the HS softball team's wife that is as stacked as you can get in an U8 league (all of them are 7.8 years old) and they were pushing for three outs and change the inning, etc. The first team who played them agreed and they played six innings and there were only 18 at bats for the nonstacked team. When we faced them she tried to give me those rules (she also wanted players to pitch even though not a single girl on my team has practiced pitching as we are trying to teach them how to throw properly still) and I said no and she tried to goad me into the rule change - she actually asked me if I were chicken - and I said no, I just want the kids to have fun and learn how to play, not hate playing and walked away.

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It was a makeup game and I think a coach just called a cousin/niece and said "hey, wanna make 30 dollars?"

No, that's ridiculous.

We are in fastpitch softball so its exactly half men/half women. If I ranked the coaches by how serious they treat every pitch, the women would take up 5 of the top 6 spots.

Great thread. I have seen some doozies over the last 10 years of coaching different sports with my daughters.

A couple of the more recent ones...

Over the winter I coached a 5th and 6th grade girls basketball team. We were in the stands waiting for our game. The game that was going on was nearing the end of the game with one team up 29 to 1. The coach of the team that was winning throws a huge fit and gets a technical foul as he will not stop calling the adult official a hometown ref. The dudes team was winning 29 to 1 with like 2 mins to go in the game! Let it go man. During the league I got to know this guy a little better and he is a huge douchebag.

At another 5th and 6th grade girls basketball game we were in a real tight battle with a team. Things were getting tense with some bad calls made both ways, and parents were getting riled up on both sides. With under a minute to go we pull ahead by a few points and the other team is trying to foul us. The coach is screaming for his girls to foul, finally one of the girls who was under the basket comes flying up and shoves our girl with the ball down. It was a pretty bad foul, but girls that age do not really understand and their coach was screaming at them, so it didn't bother me. Our girl was fine. Well one of our mothers on the team did not see it that way and she lost it. She is very loud and screaming. As our girls is at the free throw line shooting her free throws this mom is still yelling. One of the girls on the other team yells at her, "Do you want to officiate?" The mom yells back, "I sure would." This got the girls mom upset and now both moms are yelling at each other in the stands. After the game is over, the girl from the team who yelled comes up to our mother and asks her if she wants to go.... It was quite the scene. We manage to get out of there with a win and without any fist fights breaking out.

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"He is a loathsome, offensive brute
--yet I can't look away."

Usually the ump will threaten the team with forfeiture if the ejected person doesn't leave.

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Believe it or not, I've never really seen it at LL games with umpires. When I coached, I always thought it was pointless to go screaming at an ump for a kids game. I'd tell all of the parents that once or twice a season. Usually we had the same rotating pool of umps & I always made it a point to go talk with the umps before in house games. Once the parents saw that, they generally followed my & the other sane coaches' leads.

Other coaches & travel games...a different story. I've seen several fights all over the area. High school games were the absolute worst.

Actually had an opposing coach try to rush my son after he pitched inside to a batter hanging over the plate with a 1-2 count and clipped the batter's pinky finger (their coach's son). Lets just say that almost went sideways quickly & for a variety of reasons. But, I was led to believe that the coach was barred from the return game.

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There are only two examples of infinity: The universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the universe.

I once saw one of the coolest headed people I know get a "championship" game forfeited for just that reason. We laughed all the way home.

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There are only two examples of infinity: The universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the universe.

None of these are examples of "adult behavior" and I find myself most disappointed in this thread.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

Do It Right BaseballLike Page
May 14, 2015 ·
The coach called one of his 9-year-old baseball players aside and asked, "Do you understand what co-operation is? What a team is?" "Yes, coach", replied the boy. "Do you understand that what matters is we win or lose as a team?" The boy nodded in yes. The coach continued, "I'm sure you know, when an out is called, you shouldn't argue, curse, attack the umpire, or call him a pecker-head, jerk-face or a-hole. Do you understand all that?" Again, the boy nodded yes. And when I take you out of the game so that another boy gets a chance to play, it's not good sportsmanship to call your coach a dumb ass or shithead is it?" "No, coach. "Good," said the coach, "Now go over there and explain all that to your Grandmother"!

What exactly were you expecting?

This thread is a marathon, not a sprint.

an awkward tryst in the port a potty

a well positioned blanket over a couple in deep centerfield

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.