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Umps Are People Too — and So Is Everyone Else You've Been Treating Like They're Not
Description
Robbie's pastor mentioned a "He Gets Us" ad that ran during a baseball game — "Umps are people too." It was a throwaway moment. It sent Robbie down a whole train of thought about watching parents absolutely lose their minds at little league umpires, the time he volunteered to ump a game of six-year-olds and nearly had an emotional breakdown, and what that says about how we treat people we've decided don't deserve basic respect.
This one goes bigger than baseball. It's about a cultural pattern Robbie keeps noticing — the way political identity, social media aggression, and competitive tribalism have made it normal to treat other people like they're subhuman. And what it would actually look like to push back against that as a parent, as a person, and at the little league field.
Topics covered: the specific way competitive sports bring out the worst in parents and what Robbie plans to do differently when his boys are old enough to play, why treating people with basic dignity isn't weakness — and isn't the same as treating everyone equally, the divide-and-conquer cultural machine that keeps everyone at each other's throats, and the surprisingly practical case for just being decent to the ump.
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