Common umpire mythology says that we should give coaches more leeway when we have a strong belief that we may have blown the call. Well, that may be true for head coaches, but it isn't true for the rest of the mob.

It becomes more important for us to maintain control when we miss a call.

I will now relate the following example from an NCAA-level game of mine. Although all of the participants were adults, if you can call college players adults, this could apply equally to kids' games.

In the first inning, my less-experienced partner, who was the BU, made a call against the home team that was questionable under the rules. I don't want to delve into it here because rules are not the focus of this piece, but suffice it to say, it did not look good. No one questioned the rule or filed a protest; if they had, I would have joined the discussion and straightened it out. Truthfully, I did not realize until later that he had misapplied a rule, or I would have intervened anyway.

Continued...