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Originally Posted by fastpitch
I'm surprised by the rule of - touch the circle - I would hope they would have 1 player capable of making a catch - says something about the level of coaching for the league - our local leagues have a rule (8U and 6U) of must make an overhand throw and not ground the ball to get an out or call them safe - try calling that one consistently among umpires.
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Fastpitch,
To have a rule where control of the ball in the circle is required (as was tried at one time) leads to just about every hit ball becoming a homerun, (especially early in the season) because even some of the best players can't catch a ball that's thrown way off line to where they are standing in the circle. On the other hand, to have a rule that the ball only needs to break the plane of the circle (as our rules used to be at one time) makes for a lot of time out calls where a kid just throws the ball in the general direction of the circle. When the ball just has to pass over the edge of the circle the kids don't have as much of an incentive to make aimed throws. When I was coach of a T-ball team (Lady Bugs) we taught them
"SHOW IT, THROW IT" and after working with them for a few weeks many were making pretty straight throws, but still control of the ball in the circle was not working too well. FWIW, I think once the kids reach the 8/under coach pitch level then the control of the ball in the circle rule should be used. That's what we do here in Crossville TN and it works fine. In T-ball having a rule where the ball much only touch within the circle works well too.
Having no umpire for T-Ball would be a mistake IMO. I think there are too many coaches like the two that I spoke of earlier. Eventually the other coaches would get tired of letting coaches like those two run the show, especially if they know or learn the rules in a given circumstance. ...Thanks fastpitch, ...Al