Town forces argumentative parents to be umpires at Little League games

[sl8]

https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Living/town-forces-argumentative-parents-umpires-league-games/story?id=98810329

Town forces argumentative parents to be umpires at Little League games
Parents have been caught on camera yelling and fighting with game officials.

By GMA Team
April 25, 2023, 8:30 a.m.

Little League season is underway and one New Jersey town is introducing an ingenious new rule to crack down on misbehavior after parents were caught on camera berating and yelling at referees and umpires at youth games.

Referees and umpires are often volunteers and there's been an increase in resignations with the rise in shouting matches. It's an issue impacting the Little League players in Deptford Township, New Jersey, a suburb of Philadelphia, where two volunteer umpires have quit in the last week.

"They're coming here, they're being abused, they don't need that. So they're walking away," Deptford Township Little League President Don Bozzuffi told Philadelphia ABC station WPVI.

So now, the Little League officials in Deptford Township have created an innovative new solution to combat the trend. If a parent or another spectator fights with an umpire, they have to volunteer to officiate themselves for at least three upcoming games.

[...]

[bucolic_frolic]

1. What's sauce for the goose ....

[tanyev]

2. Prediction: They will be terrible umpires.

[Effete Snob]

3. That sounds like a really dumb idea

So, they are going to put people with demonstrated temperament problems in a position where other people are going to pick fights with them?

That's just plain stupid.

"We're going to force alcoholics to be bartenders and see how that works out."

[Earthrise]

4. This is similar to having kids who cheat at games become "rule keepers" -

Assigning the role of ensuring everyone else follows rules to kids who cheat at games is a neat social-psychological trick. Having acted in public as if they believe following the rules is important - they're more likely to follow them in the future. It works.

I don't know if it will work in this context, but it seems like a novel approach that might work.