{"id":528833,"date":"2026-01-20T08:00:27","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T08:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/528833\/"},"modified":"2026-01-20T08:00:27","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T08:00:27","slug":"are-attacks-on-refs-umpires-becoming-more-common","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/528833\/","title":{"rendered":"Are attacks on refs, umpires becoming more common?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The Brief<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Three men are facing battery charges after an attack at a baseball tournament Saturday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">People working in baseball say incidents like this are becoming more common.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">ORLANDO, Fla. &#8211; Winter Haven Police say a 21-year-old umpire gave a warning to Marcos Aballi, a 25-year-old coach of one of the teams in the tournament.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The father of a player on that team, 38-year-old Yosmany Fernandez, started arguing in the stands with the umpire\u2019s father, then threw a punch.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The umpire ran off the field to break up the fight between his dad and Fernandez, when he got punched by the coach, Aballi.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The people accused of the attack are already out of jail.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Police say the people involved in the fight did know each other, and there had been some negative interactions leading up to this.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018You hate to see it\u2019<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">What they&#8217;re saying<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Video of the fight made its way to the CEO of DS Sports\u2019 Events Division. Rob Sitz knows the people who put out this weekend\u2019s tournament in Winter Haven, where the incident happened.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">&#8220;You hate to see it go to violence in that situation, so it was very disappointing to see the video,&#8221; said Sitz.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.fox35orlando.com\/fox-local\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:CLICK TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX LOCAL APP;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">CLICK TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX LOCAL APP<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Sitz also brought up, even if there are more of these fights happening \u2013 there are also more games than there have ever been. Thousands of them. When you consider the actual ratio of fights to games, it\u2019s still extremely uncommon.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.fox35orlando.com\/newsletters\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:SIGN-UP FOR FOX 35&#039;S BREAKING NEWS, DAILY NEWS NEWSLETTERS;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">SIGN-UP FOR FOX 35&#8217;S BREAKING NEWS, DAILY NEWS NEWSLETTERS<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">&#8220;Obviously, there&#8217;s always going to be disagreements on whether they made the right call or the wrong call,&#8221; said Sitz. &#8220;You just gotta treat those officials with respect.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Other incidents<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">This is only the latest incident of this kind in youth sports.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">This past October, FOX 35 reported on a parent being banned from watching Pop Warner games after police say he got into it with a coach and commissioner.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">In 2024, FOX 35 reported on kids\u2019 roughhousing getting a little too rough at a Spring Training game.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">In 2023, an assistant Little League coach threatened to shoot another team\u2019s coach.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">And that same year, FOX 35 News talked with an umpire who a parent punched and knocked clean out, Rei Mora.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">&#8220;It needs to stop, because I just got hit. Maybe tomorrow somebody gets killed. Then what?&#8221; Mora said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The Source<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">This story was written based on information shared by the Winter Haven Police Department and Rob Sitz, CEO of DS Sports\u2019 Events Division.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Brief Three men are facing battery charges after an attack at a baseball tournament Saturday. People working&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":528834,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2290],"tags":[5,70173,70178,70176,70177,63383,70175,70174],"class_list":["post-528833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-baseball","tag-baseball","tag-baseball-tournament","tag-ds-sports-events-division","tag-marcos-aballi","tag-rob-sitz","tag-winter-haven","tag-winter-haven-police","tag-yosmany-fernandez"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=528833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528833\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/528834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=528833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=528833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=528833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}