[jkumpire]

Sadly, I was not at the park either, and we have two younger umpires who are umpiring younger kids.

From all I can gather after talking to the umpires, the PU called out. The coach of the offense made his kids run until some of them scored as the defense left the field. At that point the game stopped and the offensive coach came out on the crew, after the batter had reached base.

The BU saw clearly the PU was wrong, and in the conference they had, the PU realized he was wrong. How he was wrong is an open question I cannot answer. They decided they had to get the call right, and fix it. That is when they called me.

Points:

1. This is not an out/safe judgment call, a tag/no tag play or a fair/foul call. By rule a put out on the Batter or a runner has to be made, and sadly, the PU missed it. Once the PU says he misses it, it is very hard to see how you can just leave a rule error unfixed.

2. The idea of fixing calls, and getting the call right is a problem that a lot of us have with umpiring these days, and I didn't like this trend when it started. But now it is here. We have to live with it.

3. I understand the distinction some of you are making about where the ball is. If it is a High School or above game, I can live with "the ball bounced right into F2's glove (or he dropped it at his feet) so he was going to throw the BR out at 1B, inning over, sorry if I missed the call" (with the reasonable number of ejections coming after the play).

But maybe in HS, and certainly below, we cannot assume this play will be made 95%+ of the time. And the PU's biggest mistake on the play was selling out vocally so the defense left the field, so the defense could get the out.

The PU's mistake did not give the defense the opportunity for the putout, and how do you fix it? In this specific case, I am not convinced that out is the right call to fix it.

I will let you know about the result of any protest by the losing team.