Youth baseball game unfairly umpired

To: Board of Directors, Fallbrook Youth Baseball and tournament.

I attended your tournament June 13 and was appalled at the practices that your organization displayed.

As a grandparent and mother of five young men, who have played sports from youth to professional ball, on only one other occasion have I witnessed a situation where the kids were not a priority.

You changed the rules in the middle of the game. How do you change the brackets in a playoff game when the line ups were set several days before? Explain to everyone - with a score of 9-10 in the bottom of the sixth with two outs and a batter in the box why an umpire would call a game? What kind of rules are these? In all the games that I have ever attended - you start an inning - you finish.

The Fallbrook team played a great game, but to destroy the morale of another team and break the hearts of kids for the benefit of a win is beyond me. Parents from both teams wanted to finish the game. You were wrong in not allowing this game to continue.

Good sportsmanship, fairness and integrity are to be taught. How do we explain to eight- and nine-year-olds that it is not how you play the game - but how the adults “play” the game?

You owe all of these kids an apology.

It’s okay to lose, but let’s lose by playing fair.

Brenda D Bomar