[PeteBooth]

Originally posted by akalsey

How about some discussion on when to invoke 9.01(c)?

The view of some umps (on this board and elsewhere) seems to be that 9.01(c) is there so that when something happens in a game that they don't like, they can impose a penalty of some sort.

My viewpoint is that 9.01(c) is there to allow the ump to provide a ruling on those one in a million occurances that are not covered by the rulebook.

First off the OBR rule-book was written SPECIFIC for Professional Athletes, not Amateurs. MLB allows us to use THEIR rules, therefore, in an Amateur Game played by OBR, the umpire might resort to using 9.01(c) because there are some things in the amateur game which are not covered in the PRO Game, ie; Safety caveats; on deck protocol;

Here's a perfect example:

R1 steals second base. F4/F6 yells FOUL ball, where R1 retreats back to first base and is subsequently tagged out. What's the ruling.

In Strict OBR, the runner would be out. In FED, we would have Verbal Obstruction on F4/F6 and R1 would be awarded second. Now we get to amateur baseball using OBR rules. The Umpire if they went by the STRICT rule would let the out stand, however, since this is amateur baseball, he/she could invoke 9.01(c) and keep R1 at first or R1 at second. He/she could NOT rule Obstruction because in an OBR based game according to the authorities there is no such animal as Verbal obstruction.

There are other examples where an umpire could invoke 9.01(c) like what happens when an umpire reverses his/her call and it adversely effects either the offense / defense. Again this is NOT Specifically covered in OBR, but is Covered in FED rules.

Therefore, to sum up as mentioned the OBR rule-book was written for a DIFFERENT game then most of us at least myself are used to calling, so trying to apply those rules to the amateur game is sometimes difficult and therefore, 9.01(c) is used more often.

Pete Booth