[UmpJM]

Justme,

BUT, the pulled foot is subject to reversal......

I believe you are correct that the text you quoted does say this, and I stand corrected.

Rcichon,

I didn't mean to suggest that my partner was in any way upset with me or I with him in this situation. He simply let me know that he had something for me if I wanted it - with the way everybody reacted to my call, it became obvious to me that I had missed something. So I did want to know what he saw. He just told me what he saw and left it to me to decide whether or not to reverse the call - as I believe is proper.

This particular individual has been immensely helpful to me in getting started umpiring.

While I agree that the PU in this situation should be watching for a swipe tag, the fact of the matter is that it was my responsibility to make the call, and I screwed the pooch because I didn't do it right. Specifically, I

1. Failed to adjust my eyes to the ball (in the F3's glove) as the action continued to develop after I saw the pulled foot

and

2. Failed to make the minor adjustment in my angle of view to the play to clear the screening effect of F3's body.

I think my "distance" was about right - roughly 15' from the play.

I believe (hope?) that if I were to have the same play occur today, I would do these things correctly and make the right call initially or, if I were unable to "clear the screen", at least know that I did not have sufficient information to make the call and go to my partner for help before making a call - as LMan suggests.

In this case, my problem was that at the instant I made the call, I was 100% confident that I had made the correct call and it didn't even occur to me that I might have missed something. I quickly became disabused of that notion.

Steve,

I think you give coaches way too much credit, and place too much value on their opinions.

Now just a Gol' Darn Minute!! Coaches don't get HALF the respect they deserve!!! And a lot of coaches have some VERY valuable opinions!!!! Why just the other day...

Oh.... Wait a minute.... Never mind. (Sometimes I forget that I've crossed over to the dark side.)

When I was coaching, I would on rare occasions go to talk to an umpire when I felt that he had missed one of these "pulled foot" or "swipe tag" situations. I would generally only do this when it looked pretty obvious to me that he had missed the call. I would ask him if he would mind checking with his partner because I had seen the play differently & his partner might have had a better angle.

Now I really didn't expect him to reverse his call in these situations. Sometimes the umpire would check with his partner, sometimes he wouldn't. (I think in 12 years of coaching, I got exactly one of these types of calls reversed.) I never made a big deal out of it and I didn't start acting like a jerk because of it. I did want the umpire to know that I was watching closely and that I thought he had missed the call. To me, that was part of my job in managing the team.

JM