The Asshole and Umpire

We are are in the middle of baseball season here in the United States, and as in any sport where people succeed and fail in public and there is performance pressure, the situation is ripe to turn even mild-mannered people into temporary assholes, and of course, to unleash the full force of certified assholes.  On that point, I got an instructive and entertaining email from Dave Coates, a senior HR manager and a guy who has served as an umpire now and then.  Here is his story:

A few years ago I was an umpire for a local softball organization.  During the third inning in one game I blew a call at second base.  The coach for the negatively impacted team immediately got in my face and spontaneously hit a full-blown asshole rage.  I called timeout and sent both teams to their respective dugouts and asked the coach to join me in centerfield.  His rage continued until I told him to shut-up or the game was over.  Once I had quiet, I told the coach that he was right, I had blown the call and I was not going to reverse it.  However, my mistake did not cost his team any runs and earlier in the game his shortstop had made two fielding errors that has cost his team three runs.  I now want to know why is it okay for him to get in my face and cuss me out based on my error, but he never said a word to his shortstop when the errors had cost his team runs.  The coach was speechless.  I then told him he had two choices: 1) Shut the hell up and play the game with no further incident, or 2) If the yelling at the umpire continued I would forfeit the game to other team taking his team out of contention for the league championship.  Needless, to say the game was finished without further incident.  To this day, the coach is still an asshole.

One of the interesting things about this story is that Dave used the "Dirty Harry" method of conflict resolution -- exercising the full powers of his position (I guess Dirty Harry went beyond the rules a lot, but Dave was fully in his rights).  I believe that, when you have the power, and people are acting like flaming assholes, it is fully justified.  Unfortunately, most of us don't have such power to deal with the assholes in our lives and must resort to more subtle methods.

Dave, thanks for the story!

Comments

[Will]

Nice story and I love the resolution, that said the "Dirty Harry" approach is probably one of the least effective motivators (you do what I say or I have the power to squash you). Fortunately, this asshole wasn't smart enough to think of the "kids are supposed to make mistakes, umpires are not" logic.

In general, I think conflict resolution is better if you lower the tension. There is a great book about this approach (that is used by the police) called "Verbal Kung-Fu" (email me if that is wrong)

~Will at virtualjobcoach.com

[Ross Sr.]

Great Story! I had a similar incident when I was coaching Ponytail softball... but it was with one of "our" fans! One father was shouting at the umpire, wouldn't quit and was getting borderline abusive... and this was for a league of 7 & 8 year old girls with a teenage umpire! I called time, walked over to him and said as calmly as I could, "You stop or we forfeit." "You can't do that!" he shouted. "Watch me... now make up your mind." He stopped, we finished the game (we lost), and he and I went at it for 20 minutes afterwards. And yes, to this day, he is also a screaming asshole... miraculously his daughter actually turned out all right!

[Tim Walker]

Love this story. Reminds me of one I heard from another umpire working in a men's city league. He called a third strike looking for the third out of an inning; the batter teed off on him, called him every name in the book, etc. The umpire let him talk for a minute, but then threw him out when he got abusive. The batter wouldn't let up, and sat down on home plate as a sort of misguided asshole protest. The umpire called time and informed the batter's manager that if the batter was still sitting there in two minutes, his team would forfeit the game. The batter's teammates got him off of home plate in plenty of time.

[Steve Gaines]

Dave's response to the asshole manager (and given that this is rec softball this is asshole with a capital "A") is genius.

What a demonstration of the power of analogy.

When I was in sales (advertising, one tough ass sale) using an analogy that the owner could understand on his terms was often the only effective way to explain why my radio station cost 3 times as much as his other option. But that was done with the benefit of time and planning. Dave came to his brilliant comparison with the shortstop in the heat of a moment.

How better to diffuse a blunder than to admit to it, and then to follow said admission with an example of how it isn't nearly as bad as what was being originally perceived.

Way to go, Dave. Bob, thanks for sharing.