Upon Further Review: Mass. ump makes a racist call
The world can be a cruddy place sometimes. People do and say things which can be very rude and hurtful to others. Some are by accident, while others are said to intentionally hurt people.
We live in a time were racial slurs and racism should be a thing of the past, but unfortunately, they’re not.
If there’s one thing which should bring everyone together it should be sports, which encompasses all sorts of ethnic backgrounds. It doesn’t matter if you’re black, white, yellow or green, the common bond in sports is all players are on the same level and same page with one goal in mind — doing the best they can in order to help their team win.
Now I thought I had seen or heard just about everything until last week.
It seems a little league team in Massachusetts was ordered to stop speaking Spanish during a state tournament game by the umpire. The team, which is made up of mostly Hispanic players and coaches, was told to stop speaking in Spanish during the game. The umpire was concerned that the coach may have been using a language other than English to communicate instructions to his players.
One of the coaches instructed the pitcher in Spanish, to try and pick off a runner at second base. After the unsuccessful attempt, the umpire then called time-out and announced that only English could be spoken during the game.
The team lost the game and its pride, as the umpire not only humiliated the pitcher, catcher and coaches but all Hispanics.
There are several points I would like to make here. First, this team had been playing all season long and made it all the way to the state tournament without this being an issue before. If it was a problem, something would had been said before the team got that far in the tournament.
And nowhere in the rule book does it say you can only speak English while playing baseball.
Second, what’s the difference in the coach speaking in Spanish and a coach giving his players hand signals from the dugout or third-base line? Would it have been a problem if the other team had several kids on the field that could speak Spanish? And I’m sure this is not the only team that has kids who speak very little English.
Now I’m not saying this was a racial issue, but if you read between the lines it sure sounds like it.
I think what bothers me the most is the umpire could have gone over to the coach in between innings and expressed his concerns. Instead he called time during the game and publicly embarrassed and demoralized the whole team. This guy truly has a racial problem and he overstepped his authority.
For what it’s worth, the umpire was not assigned to any games for the rest of the tournament. I’m not sure that’s good enough. He should never be allowed to umpire again.
I’ve seen umpires do some pretty silly things. Mostly, it’s always about trying to show their authority. It’s an ego thing, for the most part umpires do a great job and have to take a lot of heat. But I have seen a few who want to make sure everyone knows who’s in charge and, to be honest, they’re the ones who know the least about the game.
There’s already enough racism in the world, we don’t need it on the ballfields.