As long as the thug happens to make more money in a year than my whole family tree is worth, he can spit on an umpire or head-butt a referee and still wind up as a full-length poster on the bedroom walls of America's kids.
"My concern is that kids, parents and coaches get a minor sanction from this to do the same," said Mel Narol, a New Jersey attorney who acts as legal consultant to the National Association of Sports Officials.
Narol, who handles about 20 cases a year involving assaults on sports officials, says incidents of aggression and violence actually "occur more frequently at the lower levels, meaning the prep and youth levels."
Officials in Hawaii know it.
Veteran Kauai umpire Gordon Bonilla said he has a hard time getting volunteers to officiate youth games. "Because they feel intimidated," said Bonilla, who successfully pressed charges against a Waianae baseball coach who charged and bumped him two years ago.
Veteran Oahu Interscholastic Association football referee Jim Beavers said he and his fellow refs are glad that the league's junior varsity games are now paired with varsity games.
"At home-site fields for JV games, there was no security - it was you against the world," Beavers said.
In November 1993, after refereeing a varsity game between Waianae and Waipahu at Aloha Stadium, Beavers was attacked by an angry Waipahu fan who had jumped from the stands and ran across the field.
The referee's assailant never went to court.
The attack took place in the middle of a stadium with plenty of witnesses, but there was no mechanism in place to pull him through the system.
Narol said 11 states have adopted measures to ensure the prosecution and punishment of players, fans or coaches who attack sports officials. Hawaii should be the 12th.
Bills to protect officials have died in the 1990 and '91 sessions of the Legislature.
Hardy Spoehr, who is director of the Hawaii branch of the National Federation of Interscholastic Officials, said police and the attorney general's office opposed the bills.
Rep. Dennis Arakaki, a sponsor of one of the ill-fated bills and an OIA basketball referee a decade ago, recalls having to ask for police escorts from games he handled.
"I had some things thrown at me from the stands," he said, adding that he also encountered hostile physical contact from the sidelines.
Arakaki said some of the young adult recreation leagues are the worst scenarios for referees.
He said it's not uncommon for players to arrive intoxicated. "And if you throw someone out, you'll have someone waiting outside the door for you."
Arakaki said his bill passed the House but died in the Senate Judiciary Committee because no one could agree on - get this - what penalty was appropriate.
"We need a law," said Beavers, who, like most football officials, parks his car close to the stadium exit. He also tells his officiating crew to stick together en route to the parking lot.
The short-term jail sentence and one-year prohibition from coaching imposed by a Kauai judge upon Waianae High pitching coach Fred Kuhaulua last summer for attacking Bonilla should have been a stunning precedent here.
Officials are authority figures in our society, just like policemen and firemen.
Arakaki said he might submit another bill and that's good. We need to pass a law next legislative session making it clear that attacks on sports officials are prosecutable.
And once we have a law, every recreational, youth and prep league should be required to post it where spectators, coaches and players can't miss it.