In my years as a clinician for "professional," amateur umpires, I've discovered one thread weaving its way through baseball officiting: Players and coaches do not know the rules.

Now, Officiating . com has a contributor, Peter Osborne, who claims otherwise. He writes that the average coach is smarter than the average umpire, else a coach couldn't convince the Blue that the "hand is part of the bat."

But I'm inclined to believe that some coaches are more ethically challened than mentally impaired. Peter, I know, agrees.

An axiom of modern life is that if it can go wrong, it will. An umpire working alone faces some daunting problems. I alluded to one last week when I said I always asked the offensive coaches to rule fair/foul on shots their players hit down the lines. I suggested that coaches were sometimes "too honest," calling line drives foul when their batters should be slogging around the bases.

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