play high-level travel baseball and AAU basketball:

1. In my daughter's first season of softball (6 years old maybe?), which was coach pitch, last game of the season, no playoffs. This is about the most low-key environment one could play softball in. There were a few tight calls at first right in a row. They all went against us, but I thought they were the correct calls or at least defensible. Our coach started yelling snyde things at this little old jolly umpire, probably retired. The next batter hits a slow roller towards the pitcher. There is a line about 10' from home plate, that the ball had to cross to be considered a fair ball. The ball rolls to a stop right at that line, maybe a hair short. The umpire called it a fair ball. Our coach went ballistic, screaming profanities at the umpire and eventually shoving him. The two assistant coaches were trying to hold him back, but he was much larger than them and wouldn't calm down. During his rampage, he eventually punched the poor old umpire in the side of the head. The cops showed up surprisingly quickly, had to wrestle him away from the umpire, walked our coach back to the squad car, and the remaining coaches decided to cancel the rest of the game. This was actually pretty traumatic for my daughter, she wouldn't play softball for a while.

2. When my oldest son was 13, even though he was playing showcase baseball, he wanted to play city-ball with his friends. Late in a close game, there was an infield fly call (absolutely correct call), but our second-baseman dropped the pop-fly. Umpires correctly called it an out, but the parents on the other team lost their minds. The next half-inning, my son was at third, being an annoying twerp trying to distract the pitcher with his lead. The parents on the other team were getting annoyed with my son and started yelling at the umpire to do something. The pitcher balked, badly, trying a pick-off move. The balk gave my son home, scoring a go-ahead run and what would end up being the game-winning run. The parents aboslutely lost their minds. The game was delayed by at least 15 minutes while city officials kicked out 3 or 4 parents. When the game ended, several of these ejected dads were waiting for the umpires in the parking lot. There was a lot of yelling and some cowardly pushing and shoving, before a group of us, including many from their own team, separated them and walked with the umpires to their cars.

Behavior at the travel baseball and AAU tournaments has been pretty good. We've had games cancelled/postponed due to lack of umpires or refs. The lack of willing refs and umpires is a huge problem and most of us parents get it.