And we wonder why we have a hard time keeping young officials in sport given all the respect they get from various individuals who call themselves Adults – which I question?
Now we hear of a so-called Adult and a City Councillor from Langford on Vancouver Island for his Facebook criticism of a young Female teenage umpire.
Roger Wade is serving his third term on council took to Facebook to express his displeasure (frustration) with a call made over the recent long-weekend during a semi-final game in the Premier Baseball League between Nanaimo and Victoria.
The league is known as The Premier League and is high-level competition for players aged 17 to 19 years.
Wade’s comments have been taken down from Facebook, but were kept by followers of the debate.
“Way to go Chloe Elston,” wrote Wade. “You suck.”
His perspective attracted a lot of other comments, including one that referred to him as an “armchair official” and “Big Mouth from the stands.”
Those comments seemed to incense Wade, who defended his support of his team and suggested “the umpires are paid and at this level of ball which is the best in BC if not Canada they better be good or stay home.
“Last of all,” he continued, “if you want to call me a big mouth arm chair official you can f— off, I stand behind what I say any place, any time and will defend these kids to the end.”
Later on Thursday, Wade was not that interested in standing behind his comments.
An email to his Langford council mailbox elicited a typically punctuation-free reply: “This email is for official city use as such thank you.”
When he was asked for some answers he acted more like a clown rather than a City Councillor as he responded: “I will be in Vancouver on Saturday if you wish to meet that could be arranged.”
His comments elicited some support but also a lot of criticism and even letters to the City of Langford.
Mark Bodwell wrote to Langford to complain that Wade’s comments “are beyond disgusting” and continued “Seriously, is this the behaviour you expect from an elected public official?”
“Shame on Roger Wade, and shame on the City of Langford.”
Also unhappy was umpire Alex Sagert from New Westminster.
“It’s pretty unreal, actually,” said Sagert.
“It’s a game,” he said. “We’re human. Even if she’s wrong, she doesn’t deserve this. No one is perfect.”
Elston, 19, said she has been criticized before: “During the game, there’s fans, there’s players, there’s coaches — that’s part of baseball.
“Usually that stuff ends when the game ends,” the Parksville resident, who has been officiating for five years, said in an interview.
She’s not going to let the comments affect her work as an ump.
“You can’t let one person who had bad comments to say stop you from doing what you love to do,” said Elston.
“I’ve had countless messages from other coaches, from parents, the umpiring community, just telling me, ‘Don’t worry about it. Don’t let this guy get you down. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.’”
Also supportive of Elston was Burnaby’s John Berry, who is president of both Baseball B.C. and the B.C. Baseball Umpires Association.
“It is absolutely and completely inappropriate and unacceptable to abuse officials,” said Berry.
He was also critical of how this incident escalated.
“I don’t think it is appropriate to take things off the field and into social media,” said Berry.
There are about 1,300 baseball officials in B.C., ranging in age from 12 to their 70s. Incidents like the Wade comments make it difficult to keep officials in the game.
Berry told the media “It is absolute a challenge to keep them.”
I personally know that there is no way that any of our Councillors in Delta would ever make a foolish and stupid remark such as he did.
Council should demand a letter from him to the Umpire, the League and the Citizens of Langford.
And we wonder why there is no respect in the world.
Oh I failed to mention that the umpire never called him “FAT” at any point!!!
