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Old Fri Jul 14, 2006, 09:33am
mcrowder mcrowder is offline
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Join Date: Dec 2003
Location: Little Elm, TX (NW Dallas)
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First, I think you don't have an LBR violation here unless the ball was in the pitcher's hand when the runner was touching 2nd base (at which point you have LBR immediately after the runner starts heading to first - and none of the rest of the action would have occurred), or the stop in the middle was inordinately long.

Assuming the runner was in motion toward first when the pitcher secured the ball - the runner is allowed to A) proceed in the direction she's going, B) stop exactly once and "immediately" (one thousand one, one th..) either continue moving in the same direction or reverse course and move in the opposite direct. Sounds like that is what she did, thus no out.

However, the topic at hand is really how to deal with this coach, who is polite but consistenly wrong and consistently disrupting the game. At the third one of these, I'm probably saying something like, "Coach, I appreciate your demeanor with all of your mistaken rules interpretations, but you are disrupting the game. If you have an issue from here on out that you are so sure that I'm wrong about that you intend to protest, feel free to call time and initiate your protest. Barring that, let's not waste any more of our time with a rules clinic. I'd love to have you at our next coach/umpire clinic and we can address all of these situations and look at the rules, but the field is not the place for a clinic."

If he calls time again to argue something and doesn't protest, toss him.
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