Quote:
Originally Posted by harmbu
Thank you for your response. How do I go about handling this? In our state, we are allowed to protest a misapplication of a rule but must do it in 10 minutes or less before the next pitch. The onus is on the coach to show the umpire the rule.
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Others have adequately answered the rules aspect of your question, but I’ve got a different concern...
Are you saying that you have 10 minutes from the time you protest to prove your point and resolve the protest or that you have up to 10 minutes after the issue you want to protest to formally protest it?
In either case, I’m of the opinion that what you’re describing isn’t really how protests are designed to work, but I’ll assume you meant the first version, which basically boils down to being a 10 minute period to argue with the umpire to try to prove him wrong using the rule book. Most situations involving a coach pulling out a rule book don’t result in a positive outcome.
I’ve been involved in 4 protests and have a record of 2-1 (1-1 as an umpire with 1 that was dropped due to the “offended” team winning and 1-0 as a coach). I can tell you in all of these situations the umpires were so sure of their rulings, there was no amount of arguing or rule book researching that would have changed anyone’s mind in 10 minutes including the one I missed. It was quite a few years ago in my early days, and I learned from it, but I still remember it because of how sure I was that I was right up until the protest committee informed me I wasn’t.
That said, a protest is designed to allow an outside party to review the situation and determine if the rule was applied appropriately. Depending on the circumstances the game is completed and then if the protest is upheld the game is replayed from the point of the protest. If this is not practical, the game can be delayed while the outside party makes a decision (usually in tournament situations, where you can’t really put the entire tournament on hold so a game can be replayed). To your question of how to handle these types of situations, you might point out to someone the difficulties created by using the existing procedure for protests.