ou are the league president of a competitive Little League program for 12-year-olds. Your hometown’s dream is for your team to be at Williamsport. But you want to take the high road and serve all the kids in the program, not just the all-stars.

Besides teaching the kids the wrong things, coaches who manipulate umpires are taking time away from baseball fundamentals. It takes time to figure out umpire biases and incompetence. That time must come from somewhere and, therefore, must come from the kids.

When I played NCAA baseball, one of the jobs of a designated benchwarmer was to watch the umpires and look for errors or shortcomings in their performances. On several occasions, I had the job of watching the umpires to see if they were observing runners touch the bases.

If the umpires did not watch, then I would notify the coach, who would then instruct the pitcher to initiate an appeal. More than once, the umpires upheld an appeal for something they had never seen (and may never have happened. Manipulation!) That is an adult job that could not be pushed over onto kids but is entirely suitable for a 19-year-old college sophomore.

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