Please help me out and let me know if I did the right thing on the following situation.
Runner on first. Batters hits a ground ball to the right of the first baseman. First baseman lunges for the ball. After passing the fielder, the ball hits the baserunner. My partner who is working the bases does not make a call right away. The defensive coach is yelling from the dugout, "He is out! The ball hit him!" As the first base coach sees that my partner is about to call the runner out yells, "the ball was past the fielder!" My partner gets very confused and freezes. He calls time out and comes to me. He tells me that he is not sure what happened, and that he must have been "blacked out." (I am assuming that he meant "blocked out"). At this point the defensive coach is saying, "my second baseman still had a play." I was pretty sure that this was not even close to being true because the ball was only a few feet from first base when it hit the runner. At this point I am looking over the entire situation. I consider that the offensive coaches hardly ever argue a call and the defensive coach is always riding us about something. I call the runner out and tell the offensive coach that my partner didn't see the play so I was using my judgement to make the call. He was not happy about this but he only put up a mild arguement. Much less than the defensive coach would have had we called the runner safe.
Also consider that this was a district semi-final game and the defensive team had the game well in hand. I knew that there was a chance that I would be calling the championship game the next day and I didn't want the defensive coach holding a grudge and riding me the whole next day. The defensive team was also the district host and he probably wouldn't have had me working the championship game if the call had gone against him.
Did I do the right thing?
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