[BretMan]

Finished up the final weekend of a pretty good fall league today. Aside from the worst cup-shot I took all season, it was a fairly routine slate of four games on a sunny, mild Ohio fall day.

Of note, I did make one call today that I've never had to make in my entire career. It was the right call- and a real rule- despite the mild objection of the defensive team's coach.

A little background: These are timed games, double headers, and the folks that run the league have emphasised to coaches to have as little "downtime" as possible between innings, to maximize playing time and to keep the games on schedule (each field had six games scheduled that day). At the pre-game conference, I asked each coach to hustle his players in and out and specifically told them that the between inning warm-up pitch rules would be enforced.

Here was the scenario: It's between innings and, depite my urgings to keep the teams hustling in and out, the catcher is dwaddling around in the dugout, so her coach comes out to take the warm-up throws. The pitcher completes her five tosses to the coach and I say, "That's five. Hold onto it, Pitcher", as the catcher strolls out to the plate.

The coach starts to leave the plate area and the catcher sets up as if about to receive another throw, while shouting, "Balls in! Coming down!".

I tell her that the pitcher has already had all the warm-up throws she gets and call for a batter. The coach hears this and gets a little miffed that I'm not allowing his catcher to have her "throw down".

I explain to him that his pitcher only gets five warm-up pitches and she has already used them. He mumbles something about his catcher "being allowed to have a throw down". I explain that there is no rule granting a catcher the right to throw one down, reiterate that his pitcher has completed her warm-ups and tell him that if he wants to ensure his catcher has that opportunity then he needs to make sure she is geared up and on the field to take that last pitch.

The batter settles in and the first pitch is a called strike. The dugouts are very close to the plate area and I clearly hear the coach tell his catcher, "Go ahead and take your throw down to second right here".

And she does, firing a lazer down to second base. I pop up, call "time" and announce, "That's a ball to the batter for failure to return the ball directly to the pitcher!".

The coach comes back with, "You can't do that". I tell him, "No, your catcher can't do that!". The guy starts to act a little agitated, so I tell him to, "Find your rule book, look under Rule 6 and you'll see that your catcher just committed an illegal act. The penalty is a ball to the batter's count".

With that, he shut up. But it was an odd sequence of events that forced me to invoke a rule I've never had to invoke before. The funny thing was that if the coach hadn't been so blatant in instructing his catcher to "throw it down", I might have thought it was just a bad throw that got away. The ball was on a line, right past the pitcher who, apparently taken off guard by the throw, actually made a stab at it with her glove as the ball sailed just over her head.

The batter struck out on two more pitches, so the call had no material bearing on the at-bat or game. I was really hoping the batter would get a walk!