Quote:
Originally posted by Rich Ives
It seems to me, that if the umpire gets to decide whether or not to accept a protest, that the potentially guilty party is making the decision as to whether he's guilty or not (Sorry officer, you can't give me that speeding ticket, I've decided I'm not guilty.) Not a good thing I think.
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Rich, umpires are supposed to be impartial arbiters and "representatives of the league and baseball". Making them a guilty party to the dispute, as you have here, is not entirely fair. I can certainly understand your point about appealing to the offender, but umpires are
required to accept protests on rule misapplications. Your suggestion that an umpire might deliberately not see the decision as a rule misapplication might be offensive to some of us, and more pointedly
STILL doesn't prevent the offended coach from having recourse to the league. I seriously doubt that most officials would deliberately misjudge a protest in this way. Why? Because they have the opportunity to correct their incorrect call right there on the diamond, without a protest committee's intervention or the subsequent damage to their reputation with the assignor. Assignor's hate successful protests, especially after the league president has complained about their official refusing a legitimate protest on the diamond!
Quote:
4.19 allows a protest when the manager claims a decision is in violation of the rules. As long as he claims violation (right or wrong) he apparently has the right. In addition, I would argue that the 4.19 statement " . . the decision of the League President shall be final." means that an umpire is not empowered to make the final ruling as it would usurp a power specifically granted to the LP.
Which leads to "OK, I'm protesting on the grounds that your refusal to accept my protest is a violation of the rules, specifically 4.19 which states that the LP gets the final decision, not the umpire."
I think LL and Pro have it right, accept it and get on with the game.
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No, Rich, he has the right IF and only if the umpire agrees that this is a violation of the rules. The rule is certainly 4.19, but the right to enforce that rule comes in OBR 9.01(b) - the umpire is responsible to "enforce all of these rules". Sure the decision of the league president is final, IF the protest gets that far. The purpose of OBR 4.19 is to weed out protests that have no chance of being upheld! This is designed to save wasting the league president's time. Is it a judgement decision? Too bad. Is it too late? Too bad. Was it not properly notified? Too bad. If the umpire
fails in his effort to weed out an invalid protest, and the manager/coach "insists", of course the protest should be noted (never accepted) and forwarded for the league to decide, so the game can proceed. The issue is that forwarding protests ought not to become automatic, and the umpire has a part to play in weeding out inappropriate protests and correcting rule misapplications on the diamond if he can.
The underlying principles are these:
1. The appeal to protest has to be appropriate under OBR 9.02(a) and 9.02(b)
2. The appeal to protest has to be made at the appropriate time under OBR 4.19
3. The umpire has to be given the opportunity to correct a rule misapplication on the diamond under OBR 4.19 and OBR 9.02(c)
Simply forwarding everything along denies these proper steps, and means EVERY protest will ultimately be heard by a league president, or his protest committee, when not every protest
should be heard by that official under the rules. The rules have
delegated some of the league president's authority to the umpire on the field. He MUST be allowed to exercise that authority and reject inappropriate appeals. If an umpire will CHEAT on his responsibility here, then he will cheat elsewhere as well. That is a much bigger problem for an assignor than an umpire simply being mistaken over the nature of a protest. Even the "mistaken" official will be under scrutiny thereafter. It just wouldn't be worth the risk of losing what we enjoy doing and getting paid for.
Cheers,
[Edited by Warren Willson on Feb 19th, 2001 at 06:18 PM]