Being a youth softball umpire sounds like a terrible job. These people are the least favorite human beings on the field and have to endure insults from grown parents while standing in the hot sun, all for some $50 a game.
No thank you. These ball-and-strike-callers and out-or-safe-deciders have to deal with more meaningless crap than a zoo janitor assigned to the elephant exhibit.
Hearing a bunch of boos from the bleachers is one thing, but when girls start drilling umpires intentionally with pitches? It's time to draw a line. That's straight-up foul.
Pitcher & Catcher Ejected For Hitting Umpire
RELATED: HS Pitcher Intentionally Hits Umpire, Catcher Loses College Offer
According to a poster named "Eric F" on softball forum discussfastpitch.com, this took place during a ASA/USA tournament elimination game for 14U travel ball.
Prior to this clip in the previous half inning, the home plate umpire ruled that a hitter did not attempt to get out of the way of a hit-by-pitch and therefore didn't award her first base.
Apparently, the player's coach objected to that. The umpire "shut him down quickly" and was "clearly unwavering in his decision."
The video shows the first batter of the next half inning. On the first pitch of the at-bat, according to the forum post, the catcher was set up in the same spot and the pitch was thrown in the dirt down by the umpire's left foot.
On the second pitch, the girl in the circle clearly misses badly inside and high. The catcher makes a last-ditch effort to nab the errant fastball, but it nails the home plate umpire in the chest.
"Timeout!" he yelled. "Both of you, out of here! Both of you are ejected. Out!"
Just like that, both the pitcher and catcher were tossed from the game. Whether it was intentional or not is completely subject to the umpire's judgement, but he clearly felt like they were conspiring to hit him.
The forum poster offered some more insight on whether he thought the girl did it on purpose.
"Although I don't see anything conclusive that this was intentional, the clues were certainly there. This pitcher didn't have pinpoint accuracy, but she wasn't bad. To miss that far inside - twice - when the catcher is set up in the outside box I would consider suspicious. The catcher had missed a couple of blocks on pitches in the dirt, but I don't recall any missed catches before this - also suspicious. She was a pretty decent catcher, skill-wise. These factors, on top of the previous conflict between ump and coach, starts smelling a lot like it was intentional. No place for that in this game."
That's good enough for me. Now, the next question is who's idea was this? If it were her coach's idea, this disgraceful act becomes 10 times worse. Either way, no ump should have to put up with this.
