Being a 62-year-old curmudgeon who’s spent the vast majority of my life as an ink-stained wretch, there haven’t been too many times I’ve seen reason to embrace digital platforms over newsprint options.
But the Haywood High School baseball mess is one of those times. Video of Tomcats coach Dusty Rhodes’ presumably profanity-laced tirade during his team’s loss to Sequatchie County at the Spring Fling is all but required to fully appreciate why the TSSAA hammered the program with multiple fines totaling $4,500 and banned it from postseason participation for two years. For visual proof, check out this tweet from Times Free Press sports editor Stephen Hargis.
While that punishment may have been unusually severe, it was also wholly justified given that Rhodes’ bad and befuddling behavior – and bad is being remarkably kind here – was unusually disturbing.
For perspective, the gold standard in these parts for going bonkers on an umpire is former Chattanooga Lookouts skipper Phillip Wellman, who made arguing with officials something of an art form, even if it sometimes appeared to be a contrived tantrum. And yet Wellman at his most animated would have cringed watching Rhodes’ explosion.
It wasn’t just that a man hired to teach impressionable teenagers the value of sportsmanship, restraint and perspective showed none of the three in kicking dirt at the umpire who called an illegal pitch against his pitcher. Rhodes also – at least according to the umpire’s report – called the official “a piece of (expletive).”