[Steve M]

Originally Posted by BretMan

Had this one last year, in a competetive high school summer league...(ie: they should have known better).

Runner on third. I have one out (which was correct). Batter grounds out, 6-3. F3 rolls ball to the circle and the defense hustles off the field.

Runner at third begins to wander toward her dugout. Third base coach, maybe after noticing that I'm still watching the field, alertly tells runner to "run home!". She does and scores without a play.

Defensive coach gets bent out of shape. Seems to think the whole thing was my fault. Guess he thinks I should have killed the play and protected his team from their own blunder.

Just to be 100% sure, I check both books and both had only two outs (hey, it's not like I've ever missed one before, but had this one right).

Coach is still fuming. My response: "Coach, I didn't say there were three outs and I didn't tell your team to leave the field! They did that all on their own. Get back out there- we have another batter!".

Bret,
I had a similar happening in a high school game a couple of years ago. What turned out to be the winning run scored when the defense dropped the ball in the circle and left the field. A very funny prelude was that the defense's pitching coach had just yelled to the team that there were 2 outs (I only showed 1 and so did my partner). So nobody was nuts enough to say their mistake was our fault - but they did kinda lay into the assistant coach.