Will:
Since I started doing this about 30 years ago, both coaches and umpires have changed. And that affects even those of us who try not to reflect that change.
Almost simultaneously, and perhaps not unconnected, the coaching and umpiring "business" saw a need for its practitioners to "improve" and become more "professional."
Coaches began to attend camps and clinics put on by professional and college coaches and players. Umpires began attending camps and clinics put on by professional and college umpires. Eventually, former professionals became directly involved in amatuer coaching and umpiring.
The "professional mindset" took hold. In some ways, that was good. Players were taught proper basics at a younger age and got better sooner. Umpires learned "real" mechanics wich provides for better calls and were encouraged to study the rules more.
In other ways, the professional mindset has not been as positive. Some things "professional" do not translate well to the amateur world. Indeed, thats one reason that we have both professional and amateur worlds.
Remember, baseball is not a game designed for children or even students.Tha's why the rules get changed for amateur ball.
Baseball is game whose rules and play are designed for grown men. It is agressive and, often, confrontational by tradition and practice. Those elements have also been transferred by those camps and clinics.
Amateur coaches now routinely and far more agressively ignore certain rules, including the one that prohbits leaving one's position to argue balls and strikess. Umpires now routinely respond more agressively in controlling that behavior. Both are now often displaying "minor league" attitudes towards the game, their jobs and each other.
And this is made worse by the fact that a five week school or week-end camp, does not "a professional make" for either coaches or umpires. They come home lacking the time in service that is so important in learning how to put what they've learned in practice.
I stared umpiring back in the late 70's. Camps and clinics were not heard of in my area, no one had yet gone to proschool and one became a college umpire by doing a decent job at high school ball and being in the right place at the right time when a need arose.
Soon, the majority of college umpires will be released minor league umpires.
Now, nearly every member of my association has attended a professional clinic or camp and the association itself has increased training, in the professional model, six fold over the last few years. (I have attended proschool, numerours college camps and now train in two association.)
Over half of the American Legion coaches and several of the high school coachdes in this area are former minor and major league players. The rest have attended camps or clinis put on by professionals.
Both the newer coaches and the newer umpires are displaying the inevitable results of being professionaly trained. They are acting like professionals in a non-professional arena.
All of this also affects coaches and umpires who have not had the professional experience. They see, they do. But they become perhaps the worst example of the trend because what they can see, what they copy, is that which is the most visible and loudest; which is, most often, the most negative. They don't see the study, the work, the dedication. That's all too quiet.
At least that's what I've seen.