The good senator from New Mexico had a suggestion.
“Just walk away” was that state lawmaker’s alternative to pending legislation that would impose mandatory penalties for people who assault an official.
That’s official as in referee, the guy with the whistle working peewee basketball for anywhere from 10 to 20 bucks a game.
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Fourteen states have already adopted such a law, which calls for a minimum fine of $1,000 for the first offense and $2,000 for the second time a person commits battery involving a sports official.
Seventeen other states, including Illinois with its Senate Bill 50, are considering passing such a bill, which suggests the matter is at a crisis point.
“It used to be people would yell `Kill the ump’ and it was a joke,” said Bob Still, public relations manager for the National Association of Sports Officials and for Referee magazine.
“Now we don’t know if they mean it or not.
“We have had reports of guns in stands, of people being shot at. One of the most gruesome incidents happened last year in Albuquerque at an adult softball game where a guy who was using vulgar language was ejected. He came back and hollered `Hey, Blue!’ and when the umpire turned around, he hit the guy full force in the face with a baseball bat, shattering [the umpire’s] nose and orbital bones.
“These things are happening, and happening with more and more frequency, so yes, it is a crisis.”
Just walk away? Apparently that is easier for some than for others.
The latest evidence that the apocalypse is upon us, not to mention Exhibit A of Man Bites Dog, occurred Tuesday night in Fayetteville, Ga., when a referee of a basketball game between 7- and 8-year-olds allegedly knifed one of the coaches.
By all accounts the ref was not your standard-issue whack job but a substitute teacher, bus driver, Air Force veteran and father of five not known for violence, which is not especially difficult to believe given his other vocation as Baptist minister.
The coach, a county marshal, said his assistant wanted him to get the ref’s name so he could report some questionable calls to the “head ref.” And according to the coach, “he just went berserk.”
Why does something seem to be missing from this story?
The fact is most youth sports officials are indeed walking away from potential acts of lunacy–both by and against them. And they’re walking away in droves.
So much so that the officials’ national convention in June will be “solely dedicated,” according to Still, to the problem of how to get and keep officials.
In Chicago suburbs, your typical peewee sports official is a high school or college student, but they don’t want to take abuse from loudmouth coaches and parents any more than their older counterparts.
“Parents and coaches give them a hard time, and most of them feel it’s just not worth the trouble,” said Northbrook recreation supervisor Jason Meredith, who pays his officials between $10 and $20 and is in a perpetual search for applicants.
“They’ll tell me, `I can go work at Abercrombie & Fitch.'”
The reality is that many officials of youth sports are not qualified to do their jobs. They’re inexperienced, they’re not particularly motivated, it’s practically impossible to call a basketball game between 7-year-olds, and what else can anyone expect for 10 bucks a game?
Steve Scholten, executive director of the Bloomingdale Park District and a high school basketball referee for 21 years, said park districts will continue to have this problem unless they can find the money to pay officials more.
“Sure, it’s much more expensive to hire an IHSA official than Jimmy’s dad,” Scholten said. “But they’re experienced, they love it, and you’re not going to lose those people to some knucklehead in the stands.”
Is it really as bad as all that?
Still said that after the Baltimore Orioles’ Roberto Alomar spit on umpire John Hirschbeck in 1996, “all of a sudden that type of behavior became more acceptable. Our publisher has been with our magazine for 25 years and he never heard of an umpire getting spit on before that. Within three weeks of the Alomar incident, we got three reports to this office of spitting at umps and all at youth league games.
“Young athletes, and unfortunately even parents and coaches, emulate guys at the highest level. Too many guys who coach youth-league football think they’re Vince Lombardi.”
And too many kids who used to think officiating was a great part-time gig wouldn’t dream of it any longer.
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Still cited a case in suburban Chicago in which the father of a burgeoning 14-year-old youth hockey official told him a parent called his son to complain about the job he did officiating a game and threatened to “kick his butt” if he ever saw him again.
“We have refs who have had their cars keyed, tires flattened and windows broken out,” Still said. “The stories go on and on.”
As a result, the National Association of Sports Officials, for its $79 annual fee, offers its members–along with a subscription to the magazine–a $3 million umbrella package that gives them liability and assault insurance.
They can only hope that a rider for bail money isn’t necessary.