| “I Fooled Them” (Referee 5/82) — People sometimes write to us and tell us that we spend too much time reporting on assaults against officials. Our response is simple: We don’t go looking for those stories but we hear about them constantly. In fact, we could probably fill our entire “News” section with assault stories alone every month. The reality is that assaults against officials happen and it seems that every year the sheer number of assaults increases. Back in 1982, nobody talked about such things. Assaults against officials were an aberration. Our article “’I Fooled Them’” told the story of youth league umpire Stan Feigenbaum who was struck in the temple with a baseball hurled from the stands. The resulting injury left him without the use of one arm and both legs. It was a shocking story in those days — someone angry enough with the umpiring to hurl a baseball at him — and it was the first of many similar assault stories to come in Referee. |
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