My point is Pony has a seperate book that lays out all the different age brackets, field sizes, and other proprietory rules. Babe Ruth and LL incorporate their's into the book and elliminate the casebook comments. It makes for even more confusion. Then each local BOD have to throw in their half baked local rules that can and many times create more trouble than what they were trying to fix.
As far as the problems with OBR itself we have many interps and tradition to take care of most of the problems in it. Many times with local rules not all coaches get copies and most umps don't. Then they are asked to try and interpret something that doesn't make sense to start with.
As to changing base award rules, aren't you doing a kid a disservice for not teaching him the correct rules but some *******ized version.