In what is the latest chapter of adults doing stupid things at a children’s sporting event, we have a baseball coach and an umpire getting into a fist fight.
The incident happened at a 14-year-old travel baseball game in Starkville, Mississippi, and saw the umpire and coach exchange blows over some kind of disagreement.
Not only that, but the two “adults” rolled around on the ground and one of the players even started raining down blows on the umpire.
“This happened at a 14 year old travel ball game in Starkville yesterday between a coach and an umpire. What are some of you adults doing? What kind of example are you setting for kids? Pathetic and embarrassing by everyone involved,” Robbie Faulk of State 1878 said. “Grow up.”
Grow up, indeed.
I remember the good old days when coaches would just yell at the umpire and maybe kick some dirt on him.
We’re resorting to throwing punches now?
It isn’t clear what started the fight exactly, but it doesn’t even matter.
This is the kind of lunacy we see from sports parents way too often and it is always ugly to watch.
Not to mention, it sets a bad example (as we saw in the video above) for the kids who are supposed to be the reason everyone is there in the first place.
Fallout from the fight
Believe it or not, the coach who got into the altercation with the umpire was a deputy at the Oktibbeha County Sheriff’s Office, according to Cadence Harvey of The Dispatch.
Not only did he get himself arrested for acting like a violent jerk, the umpire also had the ‘cuffs slapped on him for his involvement in the fight.
Both were charged with a misdemeanor.
“Grand Slam Mississippi is sickened and devastated by these types of events, and there is no place for this whatsoever in youth sports or adult sports,” the travel ball tournament director, Mike Narmour, stated to The Dispatch. “There’s blame for the umpire, there’s big time blame for the coach and the (involved) kids of that team. There’s no right for that and there’s no place for that in front of those kids.”
According to The Dispatch report, the fight occurred after the game was over.
The report says the umpire pushed the coach first, which led to the coach pushing back and that’s when the the punches started flying.
Narmour later announced that everyone involved in the fight will be banned from all future Grand Slam tournaments, as they should be.