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Originally Posted by jimpiano
[B]Since the rulebook is silent on matters of local interest then the rules have to be supplemented.
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Why ... the rules work perfectly well on their own. Also, teams who progress to tournament find themselves at a disadvantage as they've excelled in a league that has different rules (depending on what the local rule in question is...)
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3 balls a walk, two strikes you are out...free susbstitution, and penalties for profane and abusive language are but a few addressed by local rules.
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The first two are normally unobtrusive, although "free substitution" is often not spelled out well enough in Local Rules, and can cause problems. My main problem with language rules is MOST of the time, the rules just say "Profane language will not be tolerated," leaving this immense grey area for interpretation, which actually leads to huge differences in umpire consistency. Any rule that leads to vast umpire inconsistency is a poor rule.
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Our umpires have no problem with enforcing the league specific rules and the fact that penalties for profane and abusive language are rare speaks well for those who codified them.
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I don't have a problem enforcing such a rule when I'm asked to - but I'm CERTAIN that my enforcement differs from the enforcement by other umpires - and this is a bad thing. I fail to understand why one would not understand that this is a bad thing.
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I am surprised that someone who claims to be as good an umpire as you do has trouble understanding this.
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Where did I say I didn't understand anything? What I'm saying is that MOST profanity rules are not spelled out well and are not specific --- and this leads to huge inconsistency. Inconsistency is a bad thing. (Remember my anecdote - getting ejected for saying "crap" to my own player, and later having an opponent not get tossed for a loud F-bomb... inconsistency). Inconsistent treatment of a rule leads to inequity, which eventually leads to unfair balance among teams.