If you’re a parent who tends to forget to make judgment calls when you attend your child’s games, you may have to go officiate three games if you yell at the referee.
And as long as you haven’t refereed these three games, no one wants to see you in the stands. You will no longer be allowed on the field.
Do not worry if you have the profile of this parent (although most of those who have it do not even seem to realize it): this measure does not apply to us.
This is a new minor league baseball rule in the state of New Jersey in the Deptford area. The ABC television network, on its show Good Morning America, reported on this story.
The president of this young children’s baseball league started this initiative because he is no longer able to find umpires. Those who try get treated like crap and quit. Several minor baseball leagues in the United States are scrambling to appease parents in the stands. Especially since 2019, when a general fight between parents broke out in Colorado during a match refereed by a 13-year-old youngster. Here are the pictures:
Application not possible
All of this is as fascinating as it is worrying. It seems obvious to me that it will never work, this initiative in Deptford. If I was the nose of the volunteer who will have to ask a crazy relative to arbitrate or leave, I would have the female dog, it will come quickly. A volunteer cannot play police. The application of such a regulation is impossible.
In Lac-Saint-Louis, this summer, a pilot project in the same spirit as that of Deptford is in the plans.
If a parent, coach or player attacks the referees, for example, the team concerned will have a consequence for their next game, because they would have lost their “respect point”.
For example, the opposing team could start the next game with a runner on first base for the first three innings.
“All these ideas, it’s interesting! Ideas, we have plenty, but it’s the cursed difficult implementation, the problem. The burden is then given to the volunteers who do not always feel like going to see the offending parents. It’s not easy,” explains Maxime Lamarche, General Manager of Baseball Quebec.
File photo, TOMA ICZKOVITS/QMI AGENCY
Sad to come to this
Looking back, isn’t all that sad? To have to think about such measures when parents take a game so seriously?
“Yes, it pains me. I remind you that there is only one, out of thousands of Quebecers, who will go to major league baseball, ”continues Lamarche.
“Each year, we add rules to the Baseball Quebec rule book. Do you think it’s to improve the quality of the execution of the baseball game? No! It’s for everything around the game, “he regrets.
And he adds: “Just put children on a baseball field. They are going to have fun. Add more people and you’ll need a rulebook.”
The general manager of Baseball Quebec does not hide it: children are victims of injustice because of their parents.
“Yes, it happens. Children are not selected in a team because the coach does not want to know anything from the parent. There, the parent cries foul. Well, I would say: take responsibility for yourself and look at what it has caused for your child, ”explains Maxime Lamarche, who nevertheless recalls that for a match where parents yell at a referee, there are hundreds of where there is no problem.