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Originally Posted by Sky Popper
I know this is off the topic of this thread, but I couldn't resist.
During a 10 year old tournament game when the batter was hit by a pitch that bounced in front of him the PU did not award him first base, saying the ball was dead when it hit the ground. No amount of logic based replies worked. In trotting out the rule book, he wouldn't even give ground when cited with 6.08(b). He did, however, change his ruling when shown 2.00 definition of a "BALL", even though this didn't address the exact situation, but rather a pitch that strikes the ground and moves through the strike zone. He said he needed to see the book explicitly state that a ball that hits the ground and then the batter meant the batter got first base.
During the same game, several times his pitch call could be heard before the "ping" of the bat hitting the ball. Now, I understand it's neither wise nor helpful to pull out the rule book with an experienced umpire at an upper level game, but it was clearly necessary to avoid a protest in this situation. BTW, this guy - who was good natured about his mistake - claimed that he almost never did LL games, but rather mostly did Junior College. Go figure.
Thanks,
Dennis
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I sincerely doubt the truth of this umpire ever working anything
above Little League, if he doesn't know the rules, and has that bad of timing on pitches.
When he said the rules weren't explicit in awarding him first, you could have countered that if the rules didn't state that the ball was dead when it hit the ground first, how can he assume that the ball was dead before hitting the batter? His logic made no sense.