[Dakota]

Originally blathered by WestMichBlue
Gee whiz Tom, if you are going to dazzle us with those big words you ought to at least know how to use them.

Clever. Hide an ad hominem inside a rebuttal claiming you are not engaged in such. And I know exactly what the word means. I also know what a straw man argument is. Do you? You been using them constantly in this thread.

To suggest that I am trying to reject your argument based on some frivolous or irrelevant fact about you personally is just plain wrong. You made a statement that “high school coaches control the NFHS rules code.” I simply rebutted your assertion with factual statement about how the process works. In no way is that an ad hominem.

Nice dodge, but I was making 2 points - one your response included name-calling, and your response was based on a strawman argument.

Fact is that you are more guilty, for your attack on me about my “old, old habit” is indeed an ad hominem. And, BTW, it is not true. I do not have a habit of using ad hominems;

I seem to recall our first "introduction" to each other wherein you accused me of "following you around" to various boards, a blatent untruth. Your name-calling in that multi-board "debate" reached low levels for any of the softball boards. I thought we had progressed past that. I guess not.

I am a debater and I love to use factual information and logical assumptions in my arguments rather than character assassination.

Yeah, right.

(Though maybe you might consider the “coattails” remark a form of the latter.)

Bingo.

Dismissing out of hand all of the "around here" stuff since I have no information on which to base any response.

HS AD's are generally coaches. To claim the coach must "convince" the AD is many times a conversation with a mirror. At the college level, the infllunece of the coaches with the college AD and the college president is lengendary. And factual.

Your usage of the word “affiliated” suggests that the NFHS has a “son” or branch relationship with the State Associations. Actually, the opposite is true.

Classic straw man argument. Not worthy of a response.

Oooh, you, an umpire, bashing the legal authority for state tournaments for enforcing its rules. Regardless of how silly you think a rule is, do you not enforce it in a game.

Pay attention, WMB. My ridicule was against the enforcement of the rule after the game merely to DQ the winner. And the enforcing body is your sacred state association, not the game officials.

OK – instead of bashing me, why don’t you offer some rational counterpoints to my statements that ASA rules “tend to be much harsher in penalty applications” than NFHS. I provided three that quickly came to mind; let’s make it simple and just discuss one.

Because it was a straw man, and not at all related to the topic of coach control of the system. It was a Clintonesque diversionary tactic intended to cause a defensive reaction from the other side. Nice try, though.

This brings up another issue. NFHS allows a player to be restricted to the bench for minor unsporting violations.

I have posted before that I like this option and wish ASA would adopt it. You, though, are trying to turn this into an ASA v NFHS discussion in general, as if I somehow am as much a toady for ASA as you seem to be for NFHS. The fact is, I have no problem criticizing ASA where I see the need.

Now – can you make an argument on the above points that ASA rules are not more punitive , and/or are a better answer than NFHS for youth sports?

No, because it is, as I said above, a strawman. What about the original topic - the notion that beaning a batter-runner on an awarded base consititutes interference?