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I was at my son's varsity game the other night. I had just finished doing a game and made it in time to catch the entire game. It is a real good game between two rival schools. 2-0 in the 5th inning my son's team is losing, they are the visiting team. They have men on 1st and 2nd with one out, and thier number 3 hitter up. Batter swings and fouls one off his foot. I mean he really fouled it off his foot. He immediately goes down in the box like he is shot! The ball bounces out between 1st and pitchers mound. Umpires call nothing. Pitcher pickes up the ball is looking arround, runners are just looking arround, everyone but the umpires know it is a foul ball. Well after about 10 seconds, he tosses the ball to the 1st baseman, the runners advance but 1st baseman touches 1st and the home plate umpire calls the batter out while he is still on the ground at home plate holding his foot in obvious pain. Offensive coach comes out, asks home plate ump for help, base up says "Not my call" home plate ump tells coach to go back in the dugout batter is out. My son's teem ends up losing 4-3. Now... even if the foul was not seen by either ump, the reaction of the batter had to tell them that he did indeed foul the pitch off his foot. The batter could not think and react that fast if he didn't foul that pitch off his foot. If I was doing this game, after a few seconds had gone by, having realized that the player could not have faked a foul that quickly, I would have gotten together with my partner and called it a foul ball. These two guys never even got together to discuss it. I have done games with both these guys in the past and will be working with them again in the future. How do you deal with such obvious ineptness not only as an observer but also when I have to work with them again? Am I wrong in my logic to actually process the information seen on the field and make the correct call 1 minute after the play, even if I actually didn't see the ball hit his foot?
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