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Officiating is Always a Matter of Trust

I’ve lived long enough to have learned
The closer you get to the fire the more you get burned
But that won’t happen to us
Because it’s always been a matter of trust.

It’s a pretty safe bet that Billy Joel did not have officiating in mind when he wrote those lyrics for a song called A Matter of Trust. But have you thought about the amount of trust involved in officiating? Trust is a highway with several lanes; how you navigate them says a lot about the type of official you are.

Others’ trust in you. When assigners or conference commissioners assign you to a game, they’re indicating their trust in you. They are confident you’ll do your best to keep the assignment, or will contact them immediately if a conflict arises. Those leaders are relying on you to report any unusual incident that occurs during the game, such as an ejection.

They’re trusting you to be physically and mentally prepared, that you’ll work hard and will call the game in a fair and impartial manner. The players and coaches share that feeling. Living up to that commitment may not make your calls popular, but your stature and reputation in the sporting community will grow.

Working with partners or crewmates is a shared trust. They must believe you’ll work with them and not against them. If a game situation calls for a brief meeting, trust demands offering an honest opinion and a free exchange of information. That’s the best way to ensure that the right call will be made.

If other officials think highly enough of you to seek your advice or ask for help with an aspect of their mechanics or career, you owe it to them to give an honest appraisal. There’s a fine line between mincing words and being overly cruel, yet an official who comes to you for counsel deserves your true thoughts.

Your trust in others. Sports today are highly competitive. As a result, it is naive to think that every coach has nothing but the best interests of his players and the game in mind. In spite of that, you must work your games with the belief that coaches will conduct themselves within the rules and will not intentionally risk the safety of athletes in order to obtain a victory. Veteran officials develop varying levels of cynicism. However, those feelings must be put aside when working a game or the official’s performance will be affected.

Captains are the conduit between their teammates and coaches and the officials. Although many captains earn their position due to their athletic prowess and not their leadership ability, officials should trust that captains will help mediate situations. If that trust is broken, an official’s course is clear. Until that point, however, captains deserve the benefit of the doubt. Because, as Billy Joel also noted, “You can’t go the distance with too much resistance.”

Written by Jeffrey Stern, Referee associate editor. This article originally appeared in the 9/03 issue of Referee.

Camp Tales ...

There are officiating camps and clinics across the country. Most officials have attended a camp at some point in their careers. Maybe you’ve attended one that you keep going back to year after year. We want to hear about which camps you’ve gone to and what you’ve learned. Share your experiences with us.

Pull Up a Chair …

Everyone who’s ever stepped onto a field, court or rink to officiate a game has a story to tell. Here’s a story about an umpire who threw out his own brother. We know you have a story to tell. Write it down and e-mail to lastcall@referee.com.

I Dumped My Brother

By Jim Van Geffen

Back in the summer of 1989, I was an 18-year-old intern at my father’s paper mill. I was spending the time with him in Wisconsin, taking a break from the heat of Texas. While working in the paper mill, I also umpired baseball games, something I had been doing since I broke my arm when I was 13 and could not play PONY ball anymore.

The town my father lived in had several levels of baseball, from the nine- to 12-year-old Little Leaguers up to the summer men’s league. Most of the umpiring I did was for the youth leagues, including the American Legion (high school-aged players) games.

My younger brother Russ played on the local American Legion team. On weekends he was not playing, we would umpire tournament games in several of the surrounding communities. We would both work the plate on separate fields, then work the last few games together. Everyone knew we were brothers. He was a very good catcher, but I thought he was a better umpire!

In addition to working the weekend games, I would also work the weekday games for my brother’s Babe Ruth baseball team. Because he was the catcher, we had many chances to have good conversations. I tried to get out of the plate job when he was catching, but that did not always happen. Every player and coach knew we were related, so many of them did not complain, at least not too much.

The weekend of my brother’s tournament, in which his team was the host, I was able to have a friend of mine, Doug, help out. I worked the plate and Doug had the bases. We worked all 15 games of the tournament together.

My brother’s team was not very good that year. In fact, the only tournament in which it did not go two-and-out was its own. During that fateful tournament, the team was able to work its way through the loser’s bracket into the championship game, and Doug and I were the umpires.

As fate would have it, not only did my brother’s team stick around in the game, it went into extra innings. Russ had one of the best games of his life — every RBI for his team belonged to him. By the time we were in the ninth, he was five for six with seven RBIs.

In the top of the ninth, his team gave up a few runs. In the bottom of the ninth, he was scheduled to bat second. After a leadoff walk, he hit a ground ball deep to the hole at short. My brother is “blessed” with catcher’s speed, and the play was close. Doug saw the play as an out, and so called it. That is when the fun began.

When he realized he was called out, my brother acted like most highly competitive 15-year-olds do when they disagree with a call: He responded in an unsportsmanlike way. As he was telling Doug about the “terrible call,” Russ made the mistake of removing his helmet and delivering it over the fence, which was about 20 feet away from him. Before his helmet cleared the fence, there was his loving and understanding brother, ejecting him on the spot!

After the ejection, his coach came out to plead his case with me and get me to reverse the ejection, something I would not do. Even though Doug and I may have seen the call differently, I was not going to offer any opinion contrary to his.

The game lasted for two more quick outs. My brother’s team played without emotion after his early shower. Dinner that night was quite an event. Russ was still mad and did not speak much to me, other than to call me a traitor. However, by the next day he had seen the humor in the situation and decided to take advantage of it. To this day, my brother will introduce me as, “The only person to ever eject me, my brother!”