[greymule]

Stopped by Tuesday to watch a girls' FP game in the little town of Morris, Alabama. Two good teams playing on as fine a field as I ever saw, including college. Perfectly level, beautifully groomed infield, immaculate grass. (The home team is top ranked in the state in the second-highest size level; the other team was quite competitive.)

Got to talking to one of the spectators, who it turned out is the father of the coach of one of the teams. Since the umpires' caps showed a 5-letter abbreviation (AHSAA?), I asked whether they played by Fed rules or some other code. He immediately responded "ASA," which surprised me since there was no safety base. I pursued this a little, but he was certain.

He also told me that as recently as the 1990s, the girls played slow pitch, but went to FP as the result of some lawsuits. That also seemed a little odd to me, since I thought that by the 1990s FP had already been well established pretty much everywhere.

The umps were good but missed one call: on a swinging strike 3 scooped by the catcher, the runner walked a few steps toward the dugout (1B side) and then ran to 1B. The umps conferred and called her out (apparently neither saw the scoop.)

Anyway, is it possible that Alabama uses ASA rules for school?