I debated long and hard with myself and my greatest critic/business partner/business manager/husband over doing this post. I was emphatically against the post he wanted me to do, but he did have a point that ignoring anything that could help people or inspire change and a call to action would be a disservice to my readers. I waited a few days to really stew on this and decide the best way to approach it. I ultimately decided that I did need to bring this up because there are a few issues that occurred that I really could not ignore.

I’m an avid goer to my oldest son’s baseball games. I get into it, which surprises me because I hate watching the sport and find it boring. But sure enough, when my son is out on short stop I jump high and clap hard with pride. Maybe it’s just because it’s my son and it’s my job to be entirely enthralled and supportive. The coach is fantastic with the kids and that’s hard to find in this overly competitive world. He’s not afraid to stand up for his kids if he feels like they were wronged, which is a great comfort to us parents to leave our children in our care. He shows a passion for the game that rubs off on the kids.

Last Saturday, we arrived at the field in Holyoke (which is the next town over) and found watched the 4 coaches playing with the team. To our eventual shock, we discovered two of them weren’t coaches; they were our umpires hanging out with the other team. Our coach greeted them and received a “we’re not going to have a problem with Chicopee today, are we?” We shrugged it off until pitches proceeded to go over our teams head and calling them strikes, to which we all thought and the coached expressed this thought, that if you are going to be so blatant in handing the game to the other team that it’s completely disrespectful to the game and our kids. In response to this, the ump exchanged some unkind words and then go ahead to toss our coach. Our coach stayed at the parking lot to watch the game and his son. To which he received a greeting from the police which the ump had called on him for “physical threats” which never happened.

Throughout this whole ordeal, even as we expressed that it was a fabrication, we kept getting the same answer: “We take whoever called first word”. This was where I immediately became enraged. If I wasn’t solely responsible for staying home with the kids, I had a list of questions to ask these police officers. “So, you’re a cop in #88 of the 100 most dangerous cities in America and you’re wasting your time on a little league coach who drove his wife and kid to the game and can’t just abandon them?” “So gang bangers and wife beaters are okay to walk the street, but calling bs when he sees it is an arrestable offense?” My final question and probably the most important one: “a man beats his partner bloodied and near death but she gives him a black eye. He calls the cops saying his partner hit him. The cops arrive and see his black eye and her unconscious and bleeding. Will she be hauled off in hand cuffs because he called first?” The cops looked angry that their donut run was interrupted and seemed arrest happy, threatening to haul in the coach and another mom for trying to reason with them. It was a ridiculously embarrassing debacle for them. By them, I mean “the City of Holyoke”. It showed me that the police in that city is useless, which is apparent because it is #88 of 100 dangerous cities in “all” of America. It also showed that those umpires are paid by the Parks and Recreation department to hand games to their teams, not saying that they intend it but they certainly don’t seem to care to stop it.

Our coach being punished would be a joke. If he does, on the grounds of “zero tolerance”, then shouldn’t that umpire be punished for his much longer list off offenses? I knew the city was crooked, which is why I avoid it at all costs. But if you’re going to be so consumed by apathetic corruption, could you at least pretend that you’re not watching drug deals go down without caring or not threatening a coach for informing an umpire of rules he should already know before taking the field? And the “whoever called first” rule is just an excuse for laziness and probably the number one reason your city is so dangerous. Just sayin’.