Thanks for refocusing the thread, because it was really getting silly. I am so glad we are now discussing vowels.
Mbyron, Fed rules IMO, suck. As I have explained before, most umpires where I work don't like Federation rules. We enforce them, but we don't care for them. We service over 80 high schools, and even though there are 6 or 7 other competent associations, we are the exclusive supplier of umpires for high school baseball here. Approximately 75 to 80% of my games are played under Fed rules, and I work a ton of games.
Let's look at it the other way around. Kids grow up, from Cap League on up, playing some form of OBR baseball. Then, after 7 or 8 years of, what I term, "real baseball", they suddenly have to learn a totally different set of rules and regulations. Safety? They made it this far in one piece. What, they got to high school, and all of a sudden forgot how to play ball safely?
When Marcus Giles played Pony League, he did a Pete Rose take-out of the catcher. I mean he flew horizontal like Superman into this kid and knocked him into next week. He dislodged the ball, and was safe. I called him safe, then said, "Marcus, you're done, you know you can't do that." This game was played with OBR, with a slide or avoid Fed style rule. The only difference was that he was safe and gone, instead of out and gone, as he would have been under Fedlandia.
While some Fed rules make it a bit safer for little Johnny to play baseball, many rules are just weird. For instance, the balk rule. Kill the ball on a balk. What genius thought of this? Balk...crack...HR...not. Again, not baseball. The pitcher can go to his mouth on the rubber, but must wipe his hocker off on his uniform, or it's a balk. See where I'm going? I guess I'm just a traditionalist.
The term "real baseball" is used by umpires or coaches as an ice breaker in pre-game conferences, and usually gets a laugh. "Coach, are we using high school rules today?", "No, Blue, we're playing real baseball." See? It's just an expression. When we sit around at our meetings discussing another rule change to the Fed, we grumble and gripe, and voice our displeasure with the sadists that come up with some of this stuff.
__________________________________________________ _________
Now then, this thread started by asking when all the rule errors in the OBR would get fixed, so everybody would be on the same page, without having to take out a loan for all the manuals needed to interpret the rules.
Ozzy answered my question, that it is MLB's resistence to change that is the culprit.
Then I said that the rule book had not changed much over the years. But then I did some research and discovered many changes to the rules.
Then I did a thing about the strike zone rule change of 1996. The only reason I knew this is because my "old faithful" rule book was a 1996 model. You know, that favorite rule book, with all the yellow highlights, and notes crammed in every margin. So, no, I don't have all of the rules memorized by number. I am not an OOO umpire. In fact, I usually let everyone else argue the rule first, then I speak up and give the correct answer. Or the wrong answer. But you know that.
