It not to often that umpires can prove a coach so incredible wrong and get a serious laugh out of it but it happened to me this past week-end. And even after throwing the coach a life preserver he still insisted on drowning. 16 & Under fast pitch. Umpire is calling time for the batters before her hands seperate. But with the pitching motion this particular girl uses her arms are actually moving. I saw the call and it was totally legal and the batters were in no way trying to confuse or interupt the pitcher. The pitcher took the ENTIRE 20 seconds (plus some if anyone was actually counting, truth be told)and the batters simply were asking for time. The umpire was a good one and certainly wasn't letting anybody get an advantage. But after the game the coach who is furious about the timeouts is in the tournament directors tent just absolutly chewing on the director (I was in the tent and out of uniform) and also reading from the rule book about how the pitch starts with any movement or motion of the pitcher. Well the director asks me to please look at the rule. I simply said I'd be happy to do that if the coach would please turn the rule book page to fast pitch pitching rules instead reading from the slow pitch section. OH OH look of disbelief at this point. After swallowing hard, the coach says at this point it doesn't matter weather it's slowpitch, fast pitch or even baseball all the pitching rules are the same. And one more thing Mr Tournament director their pitcher was never "presenting" the ball. (I'm still looking for that in the book) Well after him allowing me to show him the difference between slow pitch and fast pitch he stomped out of the tent. This was the same coach I found out that had proclaimed about a 1/2 hour earlier that ASA had a runner sliding rule. Never did get to see the rule book that said that.
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