All;
Two months ago, I wrote on this board about an umpire who called a balk on a dead ball. I followed up with a four part series in the membership section (another shameless plug for eumpire here) about the fallout from this blown call. The situation:
R2, R3, extra innings, FED rules. The defense intentionally walks the batter to load the bases. An intentianal walk in FED creates a dead ball. (For OBR purposes, let's assume that the manager now calls time and goes out to talk to his pitcher). Then, F3 sneakily keeps the ball and the pitcher mounts the rubber without the ball. The deceived plate umpire calls "play" and the deceived R1 leads off and is tagged out by F3. U1 calls a balk and the the winning run scores from third; game over; s$$$house follows.
In my four part series, I pointed out that one could not have a balk during a dead ball. Since the ball was not legally put in play, the umpire should have instructed both sides as to proper procedure, cancelled the balk, cancelled the out, and had a do-over.
Recently I have been corresponding with an eumpire member about the call. Over the weekend, he emailed me the following letter concerning a discussion that he had with a retired MLB umpire. I have deleted the MLB umpire's name as well as the name of the letter's author.
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Hi Peter,
Thought I might throw more fuel on the fire. I was showing the case to a retired major league umpire who lives here in Little Rock (name of MLB umpire deleted) and he says the play's a balk, no ifs and(s) or buts. He says the rule in 8.05 doesn't make any exceptions for whether time has been called or any other factor. Any rules I can cite back to him that you pulled your ruling from? Obviously, you probably have more important things to do, but I've got the umpiring community here absolutely divided! It's all thanks to you!
signed name deleted
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First, does anyone want to answer his question for OBR? I did all the research for FED so I'll let someone else answer this one. Now to the interesting part.
It's easy for an MLB umpire to pontificate on the rules for a situation that he will never have to face. No major league team is ever going to try such a boneheaded play. Yet, I would venture to guess that a major league umpire would be considered an authority by any protest committee even when he was blatantly wrong.
If we can have a balk with a dead ball, why not a triple, or a strikeout. By this MLB umpire's ruling, we could have a balk when the pitcher stands on the rubber with his thumb up his a$$ after letting a routine ground ball go through his legs on a comebacker.
This all demonstrates that we can only give advice on the type of ball that we actually work. That's why I don't respond to LL questions. I am not that good yet.
Peter
[Edited by His High Holiness on Aug 6th, 2002 at 07:56 AM]
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