A district Dixie Youth League baseball official suspended all three coaches of the Moore County American League All-Star team from competition during a district tournament in Troy.

District 1 Director Henry Thompson of Troy suspended two of the coaches, Greg Robinson and Michael T. Maness, on Sunday, July 16, for what he called “unsportsmanlike conduct” in a controversy over the replacement of a player by an alternate on the team’s roster.

Thompson suspended the head coach, Tony Kirk, on Monday, July 17, after Kirk had a post-game altercation with an umpire. Thompson told The Pilot that Kirk “bumped” an umpire twice, an allegation that Kirk denied.

Faced with finding a replacement head coach and another player in a period of less than 24 hours, the team — players, parents and coaches — voted on July 18 to forfeit its next game, eliminating it from the double-elimination tournament.

Thompson said he is considering a recommendation to the national Dixie Youth League Board of Directors that the three coaches be banned for life from tournament competition.

The national board will hold its annual meeting next month at Dixie Youth League headquarters in Texas.

There were two teams representing Moore County in the tournament. The National League team was not involved in the dispute.

The coaches, in interviews with The Pilot, admitted to some of the offenses alleged by Thompson, but their accounts of the incidents differ from Thompson’s account.

In their view, Thompson acted precipitately and without sufficient information in suspending Robinson for signing a roster replacement form with the name of one player’s guardian — which Robinson said he did with the guardian’s permission. The other incidents, they said, stemmed from that suspension and from what Kirk called “an atmosphere of hostility” at the tournament.

Keith Fields, athletic supervisor for the Moore County Parks and Recreation Department, which oversees Dixie Youth League play in the county, said his knowledge of the situation jibes with the coaches’ accounts. He said the department “will be taking a look” at future participation in Dixie Youth League baseball.

Kirk said he has recommended that the county replace its Dixie Youth League program with some other baseball program.

“It just seemed to us,” Kirk said, “that Thompson and the Montgomery County folks had it in for us. They must not like winners in Montgomery County.”

He said the Moore County American League All-Stars had hopes of winning the district tournament in Troy and advancing to state tournament competition. They won their first-round game in the district tournament, against a team from Montgomery County that had been favored to win the tournament.

“The sad thing about all this,” Kirk said, “is that these boys realized they were a potential state championship team, and they worked very hard to make that possible — and then it was taken away from them without their even having a chance to play for it.

“For the players, their parents and the coaches, it was like having a death in the family.”

Roster Change

The series of events that led to the suspension of the coaches began with an attempt to replace one player on the local team’s roster with another.

The player being replaced, Kirk said, “couldn’t have played anyway, because he didn’t have any way to get to games and practices.”

Robinson explained: “This kid lives with his grandmother, who is his legal guardian, and he doesn’t have any transportation for things like youth league baseball. I had kind of taken him under my wing for four years, taking him to games and practices and even buying him lunches. I did all this willingly.

“But this year, we were faced with playing games out of town in the district tournament, and the possibility that we would be playing in the state tournament and staying in motel rooms. And I don’t have the time or the money to take that kind of responsibility for the boy. I have three children of my own, and my wife has been spending a lot of time recently with her mother, who has had a stroke. This boy lives 13 miles from my home.

“I explained all this to the boy’s grandmother, and she said she understood — but she couldn’t get the boy to games and practices.”

Meanwhile, Robinson said, a player, who was listed on the All-Star team’s roster as an alternate, was playing baseball in an Amateur Athletic Union state tournament. Dixie Youth League rules prohibit “dual participation” — but the player’s team lost in the state tournament the weekend before the district Dixie Youth League tournament was to start, making him eligible. The coaches wanted to replace the boy who was not able to get to the games with the alternate player.

Thompson gave them a release form for the roster replacement prior to the tournament. The form had three parts — to be filled out by the parent or guardian of the boy being replaced; by Billy Ransom of the Moore County Parks and Recreation Department, who serves as the local Dixie Youth League president; and by Thompson, respectively. The coaches said the form was completed when Thompson signed it on Saturday, July 15, the first day of the district tournament.

But, Thompson said, he later called the boy’s grandmother to confirm that she had signed the form, and she told him that Robinson had signed it for her.

“I did sign the form for her,” Robinson said. “I called her and explained the form to her, and she said something like, ‘Go ahead and sign it for me. There’s no need to make a trip out here to get me to sign it.’

“I should have made the trip — or at least I should have signed it with her name and the words ‘by Greg Robinson.’ But I didn’t.

“This whole episode taught me a lesson — not to try and be a Good Samaritan.”

The team played its first game in the tournament on Saturday and won 2-1. Thompson said he called the grandmother after the game and she told him that she had not signed the release form.

Just prior to the scheduled start of the team’s Sunday tournament game, Thompson called all the Moore County American League All-Star coaches to a point beyond second base on the baseball field to discuss the matter with them.

Kirk said the coaches didn’t like that. “He should have called us up to the pressbox if he wanted to talk to us,” Kirk said. “Calling us out to center field in front of everybody made it look like — well, you know, it raised suspicions that maybe we had been cheating. There were about 500 people sitting in the stands that day.”

Thompson, Robinson said, “Asked me if I had signed the form, and I told him right off, ‘Yes, I signed it.’ And he said, ‘You’re out of here.’ He didn’t give me a chance to explain that I’d done it with the grandmother’s permission. I asked if I had a right to explain, and he told me no, that I was already suspended. Later on, I did get in a few words of explanation with him — but by that time, he’d kicked out both of us (Robinson and Michael T. Maness).”

Maness Suspended

All parties involved agreed that, after Thompson announced Robinson’s suspension, Maness reacted with anger.

“I removed (Maness) because of verbal threats to me,” Thompson said.

“Yeah,” Maness said, “I guess I did (threaten Thompson). I don’t even know what I said, to tell you the truth. But by that time, I had already been suspended.”

According to the three coaches, Maness’s first words to Thompson after Robinson’s suspension were either, “That’s crazy — you can’t do that,” or, “You’re crazy — you can’t do that.”

“Then Thompson told me, ‘And you’re gone, too,’ “ Maness said.

“That’s when things got out of hand. Once he threw me out, then I said a few more things I wish I hadn’t said. I got carried away.

“But think about this: Thompson told us that we (Robinson and Maness) could come to the game the next day and wear our uniforms, but not get on the ball field. If I had threatened him, he wouldn’t have allowed me to do that.”

Thompson suspended the tournament game until Monday night. This, too, angered the Moore County coaches and league officials.

“Mr. Thompson got on the public address system and said, “We’re going to suspend this ball game. This game will not be played until further investigation.” Keith Fields said. “He said it three or four times. There were about 300 people in the stands, and I’m sure they all thought Moore County was cheating.

“Mr. Thompson had some other options. The game could have been played under protest for (the alternate player) being used. Or he could have ordered (the alternate player) to sit out the game.”

After the discussion behind second base, Kirk said, “None of our people — parents and fans — knew what was going on, so I called the team and the parents to the far corner of the parking lot to explain things to them. Then, eight sheriff’s cars came rolling into the parking lot — just flying. One lawman told the father of one of our players, ‘You need to tell all your people to leave.’ He told the deputy, ‘We’re in a public place, not bothering anybody, minding our own business.’ It was a really bad atmosphere.”

Meeting Called

Thompson called a meeting for 10 a.m. the next day (Monday, July 17) in Billy Ransom’s office at the Moore County Parks and Recreation Department.

Present at the meeting were Thompson, Ransom, the boy who had been replaced on the roster, and the boy’s grandmother. The three Moore County American League All-Star coaches were in the building, but Kirk was called into the meeting room only after Thompson had talked with the others.

“I asked (the boy) myself if he wanted to play with the team,” Thompson said. “I asked him twice. He told me that, after all that had happened, he didn’t want to play.”

Fields said Ransom told him only that the boy told Thompson that he didn’t want to play.

Robinson and Maness said that Thompson didn’t speak with them. “He called us away from our work to the meeting, and then didn’t give us a chance to explain anything,” Robinson said. “He just called Tony (Kirk) in and told him that our suspensions would stand.”

Thompson also ruled, Kirk said, that the alternate player could not play with the team in the tournament. He advised Kirk to find another player.

“When I told him that was impossible on such short notice,” Kirk said, “he told me that he’d allow us to play the rest of the tournament with just 12 players instead of the 13 that are usually required. ‘Do I get to say anything?’ I asked him. He said, ‘No.’ ”

But Fields said Thompson reversed that ruling after the team’s Monday night game and Kirk’s suspension — demanding that the team find both a new head coach and a 13th player in order to play on Tuesday.

The Moore County team returned to Troy on Monday afternoon, having hastily recruited two new assistant coaches. Robinson and Maness were present, but not on the field.

The game was close, and the Moore County team lost 6-5.

Dispute With Umpire

“I’m not one to complain about umpires,” Kirk said, “but, from the third inning on, the other team’s catcher was having to dive completely out of the catcher’s box to catch the pitcher’s curve balls — and the umpire was calling those pitches strikes.

“I’m not taking anything away from the pitcher, who had a good curve ball, but this was happening repeatedly. When the other team batted, our catcher wasn’t even moving his glove, and the umpire was calling balls. Our catcher told me, ‘Coach, he’s not calling the strikes.’

“I said something to the umpire about the third or fourth inning, and he gave me a warning — which was only right. You’re not supposed to argue about balls and strikes, but I just wanted him to know I had noticed.”

The game ended on what Maness called “a questionable call.”

After the game, Kirk said, “I was in a huddle with my kids, and the umpire came over to shake my hand. I’d never had that happen before — most umpires just walk off the field after the game.

“I grabbed his hand and pulled him to me, and I told him something like, ‘You ought not to treat kids that way.’ He threw me out — out of the next game, not out of the tournament.

“Then Henry Thompson ran down from the pressbox onto the field and got right in my face and told me, ‘You’re out for good.’ I pushed him away from me — not hard, but pushed him enough to get him out of my face.

“And that’s all I did.”

Kirk said he met the next day with “everybody concerned,” explaining the situation and asking for a vote on whether to continue in the tournament.

“I don’t think there was a dry eye there,” he told The Pilot. “But we felt it was too hostile an atmosphere to go back to, and it was only going to continue to get worse. They had told some parents that, if anybody in the stands got unruly at the game, we’d be escorted from the field and arrested.”

Only one player voted to continue in the tournament, Kirk said.