[BoomerSooner]

This question arises from a situation earlier today. I was assisting my sister-in-law's 16U girls fastpitch team with 1 hour time limit games. We were down 2 runs, with 2 out in the bottom half of the inning (we are home), and nobody on. We had our 9 hitter up, and the coach decides that with only 1+ on the game clock that she should get a quick out so we could start the next inning and have 3 fresh outs to use hopefully still down only 2 runs.

Anyway, mysis-in-law is the batter and I tell her to take the quick out by hitting a pitch while out of the box, which was the fastest thing I could think of at the time (by the time everybody got set to pitch and hit, etc. there was only a minute on the clock and the pitcher wasn't pitching fast enough for her to get 3 quick swinging strikes). Unfortunatly she misunderstood me and thought she could take the out through abandonment (she swung, no contact, and ran immediatly to the bench) which didn't work.

I know getting a quick out isn't exactly in the spirit of the game, but I don't think softball, or baseball for that matter, was intended to be played with a time limit, so here is my question...can anyone think of a legal way to get a quick out in this situation to prolong the game another inning.

Please do not knock my ethics if you feel this is unethical. I am actually quite undecided myself as to whether something like this is something that should even be done.

In its defense though, I will point out teams foul in basketball to stop the clock and as I stated above I don't know of any code of rules that requires a time limit of softball games.