First thing I need to say is, thankfully, this doesn't come up for me very often: like nearly never. It is well understood in my area that any coach, who puts an umpire in the position of having to rule on how many innings some kid has pitched recently, is about to have an unpleasant experience.
I have had this issue come up twice.
Once, on a HS field, some "joker" came out and started to "warm up the catcher" before going to his fielding position. The other coach noticed [as did my (PU) partner] the first "warm-up pitch"; and the lead off batter got his walk from Funnyman, then Real F1 came back in from RF and there was a substitution on defense for Funnyman, who I did not see play for the balance of the season, and I did A LOT of this school's games.
The second time was a U10 game, and the facts were closer to yours. In this league, the umps don't keep the lineup, a task which is assigned to the official scorer in the pressbox. At the start of an inning, a kid is brought on to pitch. I don't remember the exact circumstances, but (1) he was not eligible to pitch, (2) under circumstances which, if he had pitched to a batter, would have made him an illegal substitute, and (3)- yep, he took several warm-ups before the "official scorer" [a teenager] was notified/took notice of the oopsie.
I am NOT ejecting a 9-year old 'cause his coach cannot keep his book straight. I told both coaches that we were gonna pretend that nobody saw this kid take warm up pitches, and we were going to get an eligible pitcher on the mound forthwith, and in future they were going to take greater care about substitution eligibility and such-like, OK? And we played on.
|