[UmpJM]

Gentlemen,

I am certainly not looking to "pick a fight" with anyone over this, I'm just trying to understand.

In 12 years of coaching youth baseball (what I'm sure many of you would dismiss as "kiddie ball") I have seen two instances (that I'm aware of) of a batter hitting the ball with one foot on the ground and completely out of the box. In one case, the batter was called out & in the other no call was made. In both cases, it was blatantly obvious that the batter had batted the ball with his foot out of the box.

Earlier this year, one of our umpires (just finished his Freshman year of college - in his fifth year of umpiring) asked me about a situation he had had in a game where he called a CI & the defensive coach argued that the batter had his back foot out of the box at the time the bat hit the catcher's mitt. He stuck with his call & I advised him that he had been correct in doing so.

As I understand it, those on the "I've never seen it" side of the question are suggesting that a PU, if his mechanics and timing are proper, would not be able to see it if it were to happen. This actually makes some sense to me.

Over the weekend, I watched a tournament that featured some fairly high quality baseball and some consistently high quality umpiring. One thing I noticed was how "locked in" the PUs were when calling balls and strikes. They literally did not move a muscle until noticeably after the ball was in the catcher's mitt, past him, or the batter had hit the ball. So, it is not inconceivable to me that a good PU would be so focused on calling the pitch that the location of the batter's feet at the instant of contact would typically be a mystery to him.

However, I'm having a little trouble understanding how the BU in a 2-man crew would be so tightly focused on the ball, from 100' away, that he would not notice if a batter had one or both feet clearly out of the box at the instant of bat-ball contact. Though Garth implied that the BU had other things to be narrowly focused on, I'm a little unclear on HOW one could be so narrowly focused - especially in situations such as an IBB, a pitch-out, or a LH batter attempting a drag bunt. In which admittedly highly unusual case, I would think it should be seen and should be called. If it had never happened, there wouldn't be a rule - in professional baseball. And amateur baseball. At all levels.

Perhaps one of the learned umpires would be so kind as to explain it in a way explicit and simple enough for a poor dumb coach to understand.

Finally, though I've only ever seen one of them actually work a game, I find the notion that Messrs. Christenson, Hensley, Benham, Fronheiser & Crowder would, either individually or collectively, lack the intestinal fortitude to make a call because they were concerned about the COACH's reaction to the call beyond laughably absurd. So, it must be something else.

JM

(Edited to give credit where credit is due.)