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On and on
I guess we'll have to go on and on.
I haven't been very successful at making the only point that I wanted to make. I don't want to have a situation in which umpires rule the same situation differently because of their interpretation of the rules. Ideally, there should be only one interpretation for each league. Even ignoring protests, how do I explain to a coach that yesterday when Joe was umpiring, it was OK to do X, but today when I'm doing the game it won't be permitted? That's the situation we were in last year, when some umpires required pitchers to stop and others only required change of direction.
Now this situation is not likely to come up since most coaches abide by the two-trip rule. But it seems to me that the principle is the same: not counting trips (as in FED/LL) and counting trips (as in NCAA/PRO) allow for a coach to have two different rulings when different umpires are working his games. This particular issue is minor (I'll continue to use standard practice), but other issues may be more serious.
Wouldn't you agree that we should either go by the interpretation that is standard practice or incorporate it as a rule change/modification?
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