Quote:
Originally posted by Warren Willson
Quote:
Originally posted by Bfair
Who knows, at the protest committee they may have said Cooney acted within the intent of the General Instructions to Umpires which state it is more important to get the call right. Look in the book, the General Instructions are still there. If you have lost your rulebook, you might buy a new one---the General Instructions should still be there (at least the last time I looked). I consider that to be at least "authoritative opinion".
Don't forget, the protest in the Pine Tar incident went way of "intent" of rule vs. the actual verbatim wording and black & white print. I guess the commissioner's office must have seen some fine print between the lines that others couldn't see. It seems some may not have lost sight of the actual purpose of an umpire.......to be an impartial judge for fairness and balance......
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3. The Commissioner of Baseball was NOT usually a part of either league's Protest Committee, to the best of my knowledge, at the time of the pine tar incident. I suspect he became involved in the now infamous George Brett pine tar incident only because it was a case of a rule being found to be so obviously out of date, and the punishment for a breach being found to be so grossly inappropriate to the offense, that urgent and extraordinary attention was needed to correct the inequity in the system. I seriously doubt that the commissioner had ANY regard to the General Instructions to Umpires in making his decision in this matter.
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Warren: Let me add that Freix is even "wronger" than you thought. Not only was the Commissioner's office not "usually" involved in protests; in the Brett protest, it wasn't even
specifically involved. The protest was decided by the President of the American League, Lee MacPhail. The next year, all the rules that the Brinkman crew used to decide correctly the incident simply disappeared without comment from the book.
Finally, concerning the Commissioner: Two years ago he convinced the owners to dissolve the Office of the President. For many years the major function of that dignitary had been to oversee the umpires hired for that league's games. In an interesting development, however, the Rules Committee refused to modify OBR 1.11(i), 2.00 League President, 2.00 Manager(a), 3.01(c), 3.10(a), 4.13(c), 4.18, 4.19 (the critical section for this thread), 6.06(d), 8.02(a) Penalty, 8.02(d), 9.01(a), 9.04(c), 9.05(a), 9.05(b), 9.05(c), 10.01(a), 10.01(c)(1), 10.02, and 10.21.
Not so curiously, the League President is not mentioned in the "General Instructions to Umpires."
It's always difficult when someone posts without knowledge of history or the rules, for we never know what lurkers may be irrevocably influenced by such blatantly false information. While, I too, have generally taken the Freix-pledge, I simply had to expand slightly on your demur.