[Rich]

Originally Posted by mcrowder

Step one - continue posting here when you have questions. We'll help you to the best of our abilities.

Step two - stop posting "answers" here until you have a MUCH firmer grasp of the rules. I don't mean offense here, but a couple of your answers here were WAY off recently (and one included an admonition of the "stupid" umpire who made the RIGHT call). Get to where you know what you're talking about - and THEN you can help out those that need it. I truly mean this as advice, and not to offend, although I suspect it may offend anyway.

As to this scenario, 3 things. One - A call of FOUL cannot be unrung - it is foul. Eat your crow and apologize for your mistake, but you HAVE to live with the call. Two - SLOW DOWN. You should never call a ball foul until it is actually foul. A ball rolling in or bounding over foul territory is not a foul ball until hit hits something, stops, or passes 1st or 3rd. Three - SLOW DOWN. Slowing down is advice rule number A-1 for all new umpires. It will bail you out of a huge number of situations and prevent a huge number of mistakes. 75% of umpire mistakes can be traced back to going to quickly.

Why even bother calling it foul in the first place? Too many people feel they have to call it SOMETHING. On a foul ball, 90% of the time, I'm merely putting a ball in the catcher's hand.