[Mark T. DeNucci, Sr.]

Originally posted by Danny R
I just umped my 3rd LL game (8 yr-olds). Stealing is allowed. During the game, there were a number of times that a ruuner was on 3rd and after the pitch, while the catcher still had the ball, the runner would take several steps off the bag toward home, trying to make the catcher nervous about blowing the throw to the pitcher. This caused the catcher to stand there holding the ball waiting for the runner to get back on 3rd. Of course, the runner wouldn't go back and so we had these silly cat and mouse games going on. It's a big waste of time in my opinion. How do other umps handle this? If I see that the runner isn't running can I call time so that we can get the game going?

-danny

Nope. And I wouldn't recommend calling time-out either. The ball is live and there is really nothing you can do about it but just live with it, knowing that as the players get older they will stop the cat and mouse games.