|
Dusty Nielsen |
Baseball |
04-05-2017 |
Cottonwood |
I was the plate umpire and my partner, Ken Avery, was the field umpire. To provide context, I will discuss two incidents before I discuss the incident resulting in the Cottonwood assistant coach's ejection and the head coach's restriction to the bench.
(1) In the bottom of the 3rd (or perhaps 4th) inning, incidental contact between the batter-runner and the first baseman occurred on a play at first base. This incident resulted in player warnings to the batter-runner (Cottonwood player #27 Hayden Rosenkrantz) and the first baseman (Bingham player #35 Nick Burdette) after both players "stared each other down" and words were exchanged between them (though I did not hear the words that were exchanged).
(2) At the conclusion of the seventh inning, after Cottonwood tied the game 5-5, an incident between the third-base coach for Cottonwood and the Bingham bench occurred. Several players from both teams, almost all of Cottonwood's coaches, and some of Bingham's coaches were involved in the incident (which occurred mostly in foul territory in front of Bingham's dugout). I did not witness the initial conduct by Cottonwood's coach or Bingham's bench. From my perspective, once the 7th inning concluded and the game was continuing into extra innings, the teams were changing from offense to defense without incident. I would estimate that the dispute started more than 20-30 seconds after the conclusion of the inning. Once I saw the dispute occurring, my partner and I immediately attempted to, and did, restore order. The incident was entirely verbal--no punches or physical contact between the teams occurred. Cottonwood's coaches were restraining Cottonwood's third-base coach, and I was unable to determine who was "involved" from Bingham's dugout--other than several Bingham coaches were attempting to restore order. No players or coaches were ejected or restricted following the incident, but both teams were warned that any further actions would result in ejections/restrictions to players and/or coaches.
In the top of the 10th inning, with zero outs (or one out) and one strike to the batter, Mr. Nielsen made several statements that merited ejection based on arguing ball/strike and prior calls. [For instance, Jason Crawford (Cottonwood's head coach) disputed a call on the playing field for failure to either touch or tag-up at third base on a base hit (he instructed the pitcher to make a dead ball appeal at third base); obviously, no tag-up is required on a base hit, the runner was on second base at the time of the pitch, and he touched third base. Mr. Crawford realized his error during our discussion and returned to the dugout.] Mr. Nielsen said, among other things: "[Y]ou don't know what you're doing"; "[T]hat's not even your call"; and "You're terrible." I called time and ejected Mr. Crawford for these statements; however, Mr. Crawford stated that it was Mr. Nielsen who made the comments. (This was accurate because Mr. Crawford was at the end of the dugout near first base and Mr. Nielsen was nearest me in the dugout.) Accordingly, I ejected Mr. Nielsen for these statements, and I restricted Mr. Crawford to the bench for the remainder of the game. |
