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Our fall ball (ASA JO rules, with local rules regarding unlimited defensive substitution and bat the bench) is viewed as mostly a pseudo-rec league, with the intent to keep the players playing later into the year, development of skills, etc. Many of the travel players play in fall ball, so the skill level varies all over the map.
Anyway, the fall ball program has the following rule:
10. Unlimited defensive substitutions allowed, mandatory continuous batting of entire roster of players in attendance. Once a player is removed from their offensive position at any time, they cannot re-enter the game offensively or defensively. If a player is injured while batting or running and cannot continue the previous out substitutes for them. Failure to bat the bench will result in a forfeit by the offending team.
This rule was applied at a recent tournament to declare a forfeit against a team that had the number 1 batter come to bat when it was the number 10 batter's turn at bat. The batter who did not come to bat was on the official lineup card in the #10 position, and it was her first turn at bat, so a simple oversight seems more likely than a willful attempt to not bat the bench. The forfeit was declared by the state office because they had no choice the way the rule was written. The defensive coach would not allow the matter to be settled by the PU as a batting out of order violation, and insisted on an appeal to the Tournament Director, who called the state office.
This seems to me to be a vast overkill for what is really a simple batting out of order violation.
Do any of you have copies of "bat the bench" rules that may do a better job of distinguishing between a batting out of order violation and a bat the bench violation?
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