[Carl Childress]

Originally posted by WhatWuzThatBlue
Let's start with an easy one and then I'll indulge you.

For many weeks now, your expected call philosophy has not answered this:

The batter hits a fence clearing home run, he misses the plate on this game leading hit. You see it clearly, do you ignore it? (Anticipating the answer How much do you allow him to miss it by? What if he missed first base?

Pretty simple stuff. The rule for touching bases is to prevent the runner from gaining an advantage. As I've said before, I'm not a stickler for base-touching when the ball is dead because it went out of the park. But I "probably" (grin) would uphold an appeal when the batter-runer missed first. Needing to score to win the game, he likely missed the bag trying to gain an advantage. Somewhere after first, he'd realize the ball had gone over the fence. A famous play (famous because I've covered it in print several times) was: R2, B1 hits a stand-up triple. In the days before FED reinstated appeals, my base umpire killed the ball and called out R2 for missing third. That's pretty weird umpiring, I think.

I don't check the bats for pine tar below the 18" mark either. No rule book or umpire manual suggests that these things should be done prior to a game.

I'm taking "these things" to mean illegalities of equipment. Check FED 10-2-3a, NCAA 4-1a, and OBR 3.01a. All books require the umpires to check for that before the game.

I'm not sure why you are being so defensive. The ability to travel is not a gift. Instructing in multiple states is to be commended, I just hope you didn't try to explain the expected call mania. I'll have a tougher one for you later, but I can tell that this one will make you review your posts to see that you don't step on anything.

The point of listing the clinic sites was to support the words "my experience," which is not limited to a suburb of Chicago.

Look, we've beaten this poor nag to death.

I say tradition counts for something.
You say "get it right at all costs."

I say we ought to ignore some rules because the offender did not gain an advantage.
You say we should ignore some rules but not the ones that (you say) count.

I say the amateur umpire is generally better off making the call that everybody expects: phantom tag and double play, "if he's gonna be out, he's gonna be out."
You say damn the torpedos, full steam ahead. Runner at third. The pitch hits the outside edge of the plate at the hollow of the knees and breaks down so that the catcher has to lunge to his right to catch the ball and prevent the runner from scoring on the wild pitch. "Strike!" is your call. Everybody knows what I would call.

Everybody also knows where we stand on this issue. You are the romantic; I am the realist.

Just don't tell me that when the score is 20-0, you still make the pitcher bring the ball over the white of the plate if he wants to get a strike.

You know, you wouldn't be in this mess if you were just "consistent" instead of "foolishly" so. You can argue that my general philosophy is wrong without adopting a "winner-take-all" attitude. If you've been honest about your experience (of course, no one can check that), then we know there are times when you, too, bend the rules. If an umpire always calls what happened, he will be in deep caca before long. At least, that's been my experience: Rule book umpires don't get very good games where I've been.