They behave in my games

ikely many Internet umpires gasped when reading that an umpire had more than 10 ejections in a season. I’ve recently read some threads on Internet message boards where on particular umpire was lamenting that he was finally forced to eject someone after four years of baseball. Someone else recently bragged on one of the boards that he hadn’t ejected anyone in years. One of my partners, earlier in the season, told me he hadn’t ejected anyone in 35 seasons. And proceeded to get yelled at to the point where I wanted to run people on his behalf.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, this article is about ejections. Not just any old ejections, either, but those that occur during summer baseball.

In the first 44 games I worked this season, I had ZERO ejections. In the next 26 games, I had EIGHT.

We’ll get to my personal list for the season and some of the requisite war stories, but first I want to discuss why (besides the fact I had no ejections) I’m able to eliminate high school and college baseball from the discussion.

They know how to do it

Experienced, professional coaches typically know how to talk to umpires. I had two situations during my college season that probably would’ve ended in ejections if not for the professionalism of the people involved, not just me, but also (and probably more so) the coaches. People who coach for a living generally learn how to talk to umpires and maintain a good working relationship with them, regardless of how much they hate a particular call or series of calls.

Let’s look at two real life situations that happened this season:

Continued...