Quote:
Originally Posted by chapmaja
I disagree with that statement to some extent. Local rules are made by people who understand who the majority of players PAYING to play in their league are. The majority of players playing in Recreational Leagues are not going out and playing USA Tourneys on the weekends. They are out to play for 1 or 2 nights per week. The local rules allow some flexibility to allow the games to be played and the participants to get what they PAID for, the chance to participate in the games.
Are some rules over the top stupid? Absolutely, because at some point they do start to mess with the integrity of the game, but some of the rules do exactly what the purpose of the local rule is, getting those who are paying to participate a chance to participate.
It is made very clear at our yearly league clinic. "We are in a business to attract teams. Without teams you, as umpires, don't have games to work."
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The issue is that the local rules are enacted in good faith and seem to be what people want, but the groups making the local rules don't have enough of a grasp of the entire rule book and don't consider how their local rules could interact with other rules in the book. This creates two issues....
1. Teams that do choose to participate in championship play think that their local league rules are "the" rules and will get upset when a ruling is made that is correct by book, but not per the local rules.
2. The teams are playing within their local rules and not learning how to play situational softball within championship rules that could be to their advantage.
I've always maintained that we have a perfectly good rule book that a lot of thought and preparation goes into (speaking USA SB)...why don't we use it instead of trying to change everything?