The end of the season...baseball, that is

The end of Ry's Junior year baseball season was extremely tragic. We got the screws put to us by the umps in the District Playoffs. Disgusting. We were ahead by two runs, when the home plate ump called a bock of Ry. Ryan wasn't even on the mound yet, so how in the world is that possible? It all went down hill from there. Right after that, our right fielder made an amazing catch and, due to his momentum, fell over the back fence and dropped the ball. The 1st base ump called it a homerun. Hasn't that fool ever heard of "catch and carry"? So, Danny went out to argue the call (he never lost his temper or raised his voice...I was so proud of him). The ump tells him he doesn't have the right to appeal the call and tosses him from the game. Danny goes to the head ump to appeal the call; during that time some things were said by our fans (mostly arguing that they shouldn't throw Dan out as he has the right to appeal). The comments by our fans resulted in the first base ump grabbing his junk multiple times at the crowd. Nasty little guy. There were several other things that culminated in our catcher, who is a Senior, getting ejected from the game. After Danny was booted, our kids did the best they could to keep playing, but you could see that they'd been taken out of the game mentally. Ry pitched several strikes, but shockingly enough, the home plate ump's strike zone had magically shrunk to the size of a playing card. There was nothing we could do. The boys fought hard, but knew they were done. Ry pitched the ball, Randon caught it and came up to pick the guy off on third. However, the batter hadn't stepped out of the box, so Randon threw the ball and it hit the kid right in the side of the helmet; knocked him goofy. And what happened? The ump ejected Randon from the game. No kidding. Technically the batter should've been out for interference. Disappointing and sad. Our catcher didn't even get to finish the last game he'll ever play. After the game, things got strange. The 1st base ump went to the bus and confronted my BIL Leland. During the discussion, the ump head butted Leland in the face, resulting in a fat lip. When the NIAA director was told about everything that happened his response was, "What? What happened? Who was involved? Oh, Lincoln. There's nothing I can do about it." Truth is, LCHS will never win a district title as long as we are playing at Needles, a school that shouldn't even be in our league because it's in CA. Sad, sad ending to the season. I haven't cried over the end of baseball season, well, ever. It was tragic and felt so unfinished. It is a terrible thing to see grown boys cry due to the frustration of not even being given a fair chance.