Obsessed Parents : Killing the Ump: It Isn’t Child’s Play

As the game clock ticked down to the last few seconds, a 9-year-old member of the La Habra Pee-Wee Raiders zigzagged across the football field, trying to score the winning touchdown. Parents cheered as the little boy dodged several tacklers and scampered into the end zone.

Minutes later, referee Robert Sims and another official headed for the snack bar, but they were quickly thrown for a loss. An irate mother, whose boy had played on the losing team, confronted Sims and criticized his officiating. Shouting obscenities, she grabbed him from behind, according to police.

As his colleague vainly tried to help, three other men then cornered Sims and one punched him in the face, knocking him out, police said. Officers later arrested the rowdy fans, charging three of the four with assault and battery. Sims, 43, suffered a broken jaw that had to be wired shut for several weeks.

Highly Charged

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said La Habra Police Lt. Howard Berry, describing the November afternoon fracas at Orange County’s Esteli Park. “This is not the kind of thing you expect at a football game for young kids.”

In the highly charged atmosphere of children’s sports, Sims’ experience and the criminal charges resulting from it are hardly unique.

Across the nation, from Pop Warner football fields and Little League baseball diamonds in California to basketball courts and hockey rinks in the northeast, there are at least 100 publicized cases a year of officials being assaulted during youth games--often by parents or other relatives of young contestants.

Parents ‘Forget’

The actual number is probably higher, because not all referees report such incidents, according to Melvin Narol, a Princeton, N.J., attorney and legal columnist of Referee, the magazine of the 10,000-member National Assn. of Sports Officials.

“These confrontations run the gamut from pushing and shoving to serious assault and include all high-intensity youth sports,” said Narol, who keeps records of such incidents and has made a legal specialty of the civil rights of sports officials.

“You have parents out there who forget that sports are supposed to be a learning experience for their children. They forget that a referee is a person with legal rights just like you and me.”

Umpires are beginning to fight back. Last summer, three Little League umpires in Southern California filed assault and battery charges alleging that they were tackled, slugged or threatened with a knife by relatives of players. In one case, a court approved a $12,000 judgment in favor of a Long Beach umpire who was hit over the head with a baseball bat.

Several states, including Pennsylvania and Oklahoma, have passed laws mandating that host teams provide security for officials at sporting events. Many youth leagues prescribe harsh punishments for those who assault referees, including banishment from the playing field.

For most parents, participation in children’s sports involves nothing more than taking young players to the park, grooming the field or dispensing lemonade and encouragement. The majority of mothers and fathers are appalled by adults who become violent at such contests, according to sports psychologists.

Sociologists and others familiar with youth sports estimate, however, that 15% to 20% of the nation’s parents behave abusively toward umpires at their children’s sports events. These parents typically share common sources of frustration in their lives, said Bruce Ogilvie, professor emeritus of psychology at San Jose State University.

“It can happen to a father who is locked into a career with no future,” said Ogilvie, the author of 190 articles and books on sports psychology, a consultant to three professional basketball teams and the U.S. Olympic figure skating team.

‘Gnawing Empty Space’

“It’s the parent whose own dreams were not fulfilled. They have a gnawing empty space in their lives, and now they expect their son or daughter to fill it up.”

The problems are exacerbated when parents--influenced by hours of television sports and an obsession with winning--attempt to mold their children into miniature versions of adult sports professionals, no matter what the cost, said Harry Edwards, professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley.

“It begins at that point when the father walks into the maternity ward carrying a blanket with little football insignias, baseball bats or hockey pucks on it,” Edwards said.

“He does not ask whether his baby is healthy or even whether it has a nose centered between its eyes, but ‘How long is he and how much does he weigh?’ ”

Only a fraction of the children who play sports ever advance to the professional level, but that does not deter some parents from bringing a Super Bowl-like intensity to contests between athletes less than a decade out of diapers. And when the game goes badly for one team, it is often the official who bears the brunt of the parents’ frustration and fury.

‘More Infantile’

“What these parents are doing is getting more infantile than their children,” said Thomas Tutko, professor of psychology at San Jose State University. “They’re attacking the outside world--in this case an umpire--because of their own sense of inadequacy. They’re saying, ‘I don’t feel good inside and I’m mad at society, so I’ll attack an umpire.’ ”

What’s worse, these outbursts distort the lessons young players should be learning through sports, experts say. When an adult engages in a fistfight with an official, it shows children that--despite all those lectures about sportsmanship--their parents have not mastered the art of cooperation and the civilized resolution of conflicts.

“Instead of teaching the child that the umpire made a bad call and that life has its bad calls, (parents are) telling the child that he’s above authority,” Tutko said.

“The obsession with winning has nothing to do with the kids’ needs, which are not to win but to grow, develop, learn, be with their friends and have fun,” he added. “There’s no Williamsport (the Pennsylvania site of the Little League World Series) for the happiest team or the most mature team.”

Police Protection

Amid these pressures--and the resulting violence on some athletic fields--many referees now request police protection during athletic events. They have also begun consulting with lawyers in response to a growing number of assaults:

- During a Father’s Day game last year in Huntington Beach, a 16-year-old Little League umpire was punched by a father who was angry about several calls against his son’s team, police said. The umpire, who had one arm in a cast at the time of the incident, filed assault and battery charges against the father.

- In Dublin, Ga., an official at a Midget League football game was jumped from behind by a player’s father, knocked to the ground and hit five times before coaches could pull him away. The official suffered a broken rib, bruises and a knot on the head, resulting in a two-day hospital stay. He filed a $150,000 claim against the assailant.

- Last year, a referee at a Sonoma, Calif., high school basketball game was verbally accosted and then punched in the face by the friend of a player whose team had just lost. The battered official, not content to be reimbursed for his dental bills, won $35,000 in an out-of-court settlement.

In some cases, the sheer frenzy of a game can bring out the worst in fans, according to sports psychologists. During the La Habra incident, for example, police and other spectators allege that the people arrested for assault and battery had been drinking. The suspects could not be reached for comment.

‘The Real Children’

Orange Empire football conference officials, who sponsored the “Mighty Mite” division game between the La Habra team and the losing Long Beach Bears, pledged to crack down on alcoholic consumption during future games. They emphasized, however, that the majority of parents on both teams were appalled by what took place.

“It took just a few bad apples to ruin the game for everybody,” said one parent. “This was a game played by little boys, but you have to wonder who the real children were when it was all over.”

In other incidents, adults explode at referees for more personal reasons. The Huntington Beach melee--in which teen-age umpire C. J. Ellson allegedly was slugged and knocked to the ground by Robert Foster, an angry father--is a case in point.

At the Little League games played by the Huntington Beach A’s last season, it was easy to pick out the 40-year-old Foster under his trademark California Angels cap. Players and parents said he enjoyed reminiscing about his own days as a boxer and how he had missed his chance at a major league baseball career.

Foster, a cabinet salesman, said he has devoted himself in the last few years to improving the baseball skills of his 15-year-old son, Bobby. The father stressed that he has spent long hours helping the boy polish his game and hopes someday to watch his son play for the Angels.

2 Sides of Story

During a game last Father’s Day, however, witnesses said Foster lost his cool. After Ellson made several calls against the A’s, the burly father allegedly charged onto the field and began pummeling the young umpire, whose right arm was in a cast. As the game suddenly halted, parents swarmed onto the field to break up the fight.

Foster explained the incident differently from Ellson and from other parents. The Garden Grove man described himself as a protective, highly involved father and called the umpire a “troublemaker” who insulted his wife in ordering her to quiet down in the stands.

Foster added that he did not hit Ellson, explaining that he only went onto the field after being challenged to a fight by the umpire.

The Orange County district attorney, however, filed three charges of assault and battery and disturbing the peace against Foster. If convicted, he could receive up to six months’ probation and a $500 fine.

Many sports experts believe that it is imperative that swift action be taken against parents who physically confront umpires, lest young players and other fans imitate such behavior. If such actions go unpunished, “the message is that you can behave like that and nothing bad happens,” Edwards said.

“Other fathers come to feel that they can at least grab the wire of the backstop and call the umpire an S.O.B. since, ‘I’m just yelling, I’m not punching anybody.’

‘Ruins’ the Game

“Then you begin to get a ripple effect,” he added. “These kinds of situations come to extend the boundaries of acceptable behavior, the same way that Jimmy Connors and (Ilie) Nastase’s antics extended the boundaries of acceptable behavior in tennis.”

More important, the sight of an enraged adult charging onto a playing field destroys the fun and excitement of the game, according to young athletes.

“It ruins it,” said Jon Cernok, 15, a towheaded first baseman who watched with “awe” as Foster charged onto the Huntington Beach field during the ballgame. “It’s a kids’ game. Just let us play.”

Jon said Foster’s actions “hit me by surprise. . . . I was sitting there with my mouth open. It was embarrassing to the team. It was probably especially embarrassing for the kid (teammate Bobby Foster) because it happened on Father’s Day.”

A’s pitcher Danny Steinle, 13, agreed, saying the incident “was uncalled for and it hurt the team because no one could pay attention to the game after that.”

The intensity that some parents bring to youth sports can also put a burden on their children at home, long after the games are over, said Jonathan Brower, a sociology professor at California State University, Fullerton, who has studied youth baseball.

Dinner Confrontation

“A lot of times these dynamics go on at home over dinner,” he explained. “Parents ask, ‘Why did you let that guy steal second?’ Or ‘Why didn’t you throw the ball to the cutoff man? You’ve been practicing that all week!’ ”

Brower said it is much healthier for parents to stay in the background, adding: “If an umpire calls the kid out and I think he was safe, why do I need to rescue my kid from that?”

Although most parents do not lose control at their children’s athletic events, the growing number of assaults has prompted referees to seek effective ways of fighting back. Many are relying on the courts for protection.

“The tension involved--even in Little League games--is so great that people lose sight of the fact that the umpire only gets paid $10 or something, and he’s out there to help out the kids and their town,” Narol said.

“The risks they are exposing themselves to are much greater than the amount of money they’re being paid. What has happened in the past five years is that many umpires have learned of their rights, that they can file criminal complaints or civil suits to defend themselves.”

Last year, the National Assn. of Sports Officials drafted a proposed “Officials’ Bill of Rights” that was circulated to athletic leagues and conferences throughout the country. The rights include “full security and protection from physical assaults from the time of arrival at the site through time of departure.”

Mixed Results

Members of the association say their activism is paying off. Narol believes that some parents and other spectators have been persuaded to control themselves during games after well-publicized examples of officials pressing criminal assault charges.

Yet results in the civil courts have been mixed.

Larry Poole, a Midget League football official who was attacked by an irate father in Georgia, struck back by filing a civil suit asking $150,000 damages in Superior Court. His assailant was fined $500 and put on six months’ probation after being convicted of misdemeanor assault. When Poole’s civil suit went to trial last April, however, the jury awarded him just $300.

Poole, an appliance repairman who missed three weeks of work after the encounter, decided to get out of officiating.

“I had to give it up,” he said. “I just can’t afford it. It didn’t pay enough to put up with the harassment from the parents.”

Robert Sims, speaking with difficulty through his wired jaw, said the La Habra assault has prevented him from looking for a new job. Still, the former storeroom clerk said he looks forward to officiating at Pop Warner and Little League contests next season.

“I’ll be back,” he said. “I’m not hanging it up because of this. Of course, if I get my jaw broken again next year, that might be something else.”