[greymule]

In terms of briefing the new crew: I don't know what the official instructions to umpires are, but if I were coming in to replace the guys who did the first game, I'd sure appreciate knowing anything I could. With that knowledge, I would give the teams a short, general warning to behave themselves in the second game. No, they don't start fresh, especially with regard to throwing at batters. Remember the situation with Clemens and the Mets this year. That crew most certainly was instructed to have a "bias" on the basis of past games.

I remember doing a girls' fast-pitch game in which I ruled a crash at the plate and called the runner out but, feeling the crash didn't quite meet the criteria for "flagrant," didn't eject the runner. I'm sure people will say I'm sexist, but in general females don't try to get away with dirty play at anywhere near the level that males do.

The crash didn't look that bad to me, but the fans and coaches screamed like hell. One drunken father had to be restrained from coming out after me. To make matters worse, though the catcher tried to continue playing, she had to be taken out and ended up in the emergency room. Both teams were highly ranked and were from the same town, about 30 miles away. Had I known that there was a long history of bad blood between the teams, I would have seen the crash differently. But of all the people in the park, I was apparently the only one who was ignorant of the situation.