[Berkut]

OK, I am a basketball and football official, and have no experience officiating baseball. So I am coming at this from a parent standpoint.

During my sons recent 10 year old LL game, he pitched in the 1st inning, then

A) Played another position the 2nd inning, or
B) Sat the second inning.

I don't recall which, but I think he played another position.

Then he pitched in the third inning. This was planned by the coaches, they try to get everyone playing difference positions, so they plan out the shuffle pre-game. So my son was planned to pitch the 1/3/6 innings, with another kid pitching 2/5 and another kid pitching 4. Could jsut as easily done 1/2, 3/4, 6 of course.

So, apparently it turns out this is against the rules - a pitcher is not allowed to pitch in non-consecutive innings. Fair enough - the coaches screwed up.

My question is - is this actually grounds for appealing the game, and then having the game be forfeit on the basis that the pitcher should not have been allowed to pitch in the 3rd inning?

How much discretion is typical when it comes to a decision by tournament officials to force a team to forfeit a game? Is tic cut and dried - you broke the rule, so you MUST forfeit, or is there some judgment involved?

My sons team won the game by a handy margin, and the other coaches went to the board or whatever, and we just found out that the game would be forfeit as a result of the illegal pitching.

To my admittedly biased and largely uninformed mind, this seems like a rather drastic reaction to an honest mistake that really had no bearing on the outcome of the game. Nobody complained at the time, nobody brought up up to a tournament director when my son went back in in the third, nobody said anything...until we find out that we have forfeited the game.