R-C Sports Notebook: Giving umpires the ability to heckle

What if we turned the tables?

I'm serious, what if we gave baseball umpires the privilege to answer back to the heckles, hollers, taunts, threats and jeers they receive during the course of a game?

If you somehow missed it and you want to have some fun, go on over to youtube.com and do a search for "Phillip Wellman." The Mississippi Braves manager went nuts on an umpire earlier this summer and was appropriately ejected and later suspended for his actions.

But the thing is, every time something like this happens in the big time it echoes on down to the lowest levels of the game.

As a country, we've come to accept this type of behavior. More so, it would seem we feel compelled to mirror it.

I received a report about an incident at the local adult softball league at Lampe Park a couple of weeks ago, where players took it upon themselves to confront an umpire during a game. The police ended up having to respond to the scene.

Who does that? Where in the etiquette of baseball, or any sport for that matter, is it OK for a player to walk up to an umpire or referee and spout off?

You'd be tossed from the game on the spot. Chances are, if it were in college or high school, you'd have a difficult time being allowed into the next practice by your coach.

I've started to think about how much "fun" it would be to grant the umpires heckling privileges, even just for one day a year.

Let your imagination run with this one for a second.

A guy comes to the plate who 0-for his last 10 at-bats " "Son, you might as well just head back to the dugout now and save us all the next three pitches."

The shortstop gaffs on an easy grounder " "How could you miss that ball? It was right there in front of you. What, are you blind?"

The manager pinch hits his No. 6 batter in the bottom of the seventh " "There's a genius call, skip! They're still letting you run this team?"

He could even turn on the crowd if he wanted " "What is that, your fifth hot dog tonight?"

Wishful thinking, but fun to imagine just the same.

What it comes down to is that there is a double-standard inherently built into sport where the rule-keepers are put under a stronger microscope than anyone else on the field.

Instead of fostering a culture of respect from the top down, we're beginning to see the professional game's treatment of its officials crop up at the local level.

After Carson Valley wrapped up the district Little League All-Star tournaments last week, a number of coaches and parents commented on how the hyper-successful Washoe league, which won four of the five available titles, plays year-round baseball.

Washoe has been the perennial power in the area, so to speak, for a number of years and many of the young league's past top players have fed into the powerful Galena High School and quickly-improving Damonte Ranch baseball programs.

The theory goes, in order to truly compete against Washoe, Carson Valley will eventually have to look into a similar year-round set-up.

Maybe.

But on the other hand, Douglas has enjoyed a true renaissance in baseball at the high school level since John Glover took the helm of the program five years ago.

The team has produced two league championships, one regional runner-up finish and three regional semifinalist appearances during that stretch.

Part of that can be attributed to Glover's system, which is among the most efficient in the area, and part can be attributed to that year-round mentality.

Thanks to a strong Little League system, a powerhouse Pop Warner football program and a growing AAU basketball program, Carson Valley has been producing ultra-athletes for the last four or five years.

This new class of Douglas athlete reared its head in 2003, when the senior class " which was the first to really go through the all three-feeder systems here " won a league title and advanced to the regional title game in football, made the regional playoffs in basketball and made some noise in the regional baseball playoffs after opening the year with an 18-game win streak.

While we may not have year-round Little League yet (the first full season of fall baseball is slated for the fall with sign-ups Wednesday and Saturday of this week at the Douglas County Senior Center), we are producing quality year-round athletes on a large scale.

Sure, other baseball leagues may have the upper hand for now in these are all-star tournaments, but once these kids reach high school Douglas is right in there with the big boys in every sport. While our guys might not be playing baseball all year, they are for the most part playing something all year.

That begins to show when they reach high school.

Ask anyone for the most successful mixes of multi-sport athletes in the area and they'll point to Galena and Douglas first.

Learning the game skills is one thing, but the value of getting ready-made teams that have been together since elementary school in a variety of sports has proven to be an intangible that not many other areas in Northern Nevada can match.

This technically happened just across the border in Minden, but just the same it

works.

They finally tore down the old Greater Nevada Credit Union building last week.

It was a bittersweet moment for me and my wife as it was the place where we first met.

We pulled off to the parking lot across the street to watch the demolition process, which was amusing enough in itself for us.

What really tickled us, however, was that a good five or six other cars stopped to do the same.

Children shrieked with delight from the back seats of their parents vehicles and grown men shouted, "Whoa, look at that."

Just think what kind of crowd we would draw if we followed Las Vegas' suit and actually blow our vacant buildings up.

San Diego Padres lefty and Douglas High grad Shawn Estes will continue his rehab from "Tommy John" surgery at Class A Lake Elsinore starting Friday night.

Estes had the surgery last June after making only one start for the Padres last season.

He is scheduled to pitch four innings Friday and is hoping to be back at the big league level next month.

Yet another riddle, adapted from Dom Forker's Baseball Brain Teasers:

Douglas has a runner at third base with one out. The batter slugs a ball into deep right center.

Carson's right fielder makes a play on the ball, but it glances off his glove and into the air. Douglas' runner, waiting on the base for the catch, sees the ball bounce off the fielder and bolts for home plate. At the same time, the Senators' heady center fielder springs into the air and makes a diving catch off the deflection. He hurls the ball back into to third base.

Two questions: Is the batter out? And, is the baserunner out?

See below for the answer.

Triathlete Andrea Lindsey and Douglas senior-to-be Jonathon Glocknitzer, rodeo: Lindsey recently qualified for the world triathlon championships in Germany after placing eighth in her age group at the national championships in Portland.

Glocknitzer heads to Springfield, Ill., this week to compete in the National High School Rodeo Finals in cutting.

The batter is, as you might have easily guessed, out. The center fielder gets credited with the put out and the right fielder is actually credited with an assist.

The runner, however, is safe at home. A runner can legally tag up and advance as soon as a fielder touches the ball. He doesn't have to wait for a fielder to actually possess the ball.