[PeteBooth]

Originally posted by harmbu

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?

First off I do not mean to be rude, etc. but if you are going to umpire a game because you want the coaches to approve you for some big assignment, then your not doing justice to the profession.

This is the political part of umpiring and you are just making it more difficult on the next crew who has this team. I hear it all the time "so and so didn't say anything about this" or another favorite of mine "Hey Blue this is the first time all year someone said something about this or called that a Balk"

We all want those BIG game assignments but you can't umpire a game thinking of how a coach is going to react. We umpire the game based upon the rules that govern a specific organization.

Also, you committed one of the Cardinal rules of umpiring Ruling by Committee Interference / Obstruction are not every day calls so whomever the call went against is going to be upset.

If you are unsure, the best thing to do is get with your partner away from the coaches and discuss the situation. One aspect of being a good umpire is to know the rules.

For the most part whenever a runner is hit with a ball they are out Except:

If a fielder deflects the ball or the ball passed the fielder and in your judgement no other fielder had a chance at the ball. Sounds like you umpired a HS game which uses FED rules so apply the "string theory" which says "draw a string around all the infileders and if the ball passes the string (of infielders) and then hits the runner, the runner is not out"

A coach will always want things to go their way on these "touchy" calls, however, it's you or your partners judgement that counts and not the coaches.

Again, I do not mean to be harsh, but if you or your partner are "freezing" on calls and you do not want to upset a coach for a possible future game assignment, perhaps both of you are not yet ready for prime time.

I know it's taboo here somewhat, but Jon Bible who writes for referee, recently wrote excellent articles about moving up and what it takes. If you do subscribe to that magazine, please read Jon's articles and IMO you will find them valuable.

In addition, there are valuable resources at this site also who have written articles of a similar nature.

Pete Booth