[dketter]

I am coaching a 4th grade baseball team, we are playing MLB rules other than the fact that the whole team bats.

Tonight we had a game where our team was in the field, we believed that we had two outs, we got another out and our team started leaving the field. There was a runner on 3rd base who when we started to leave the field, left his base and went to the dugout. Not all of our players had left the field when we were alerted that it was only the 2nd out. Our 3rd baseman who had not left the field of play picked up the ball went to third base and touched the bag. he stayed there and waited for the runner to return to the base and tagged him as he walked back to the base. The Umpire called "Time" before the base runner returned to the bag because we were questioning about the runner being out.

The umpire let the runner return to the base and we continued the inning, that call cost us at least a tie to an otherwise undefeated season.I have 24 hours to appeal the call if I so choose.

A similar incident happened in a previous game however we were on the other side of this situation and our runner was called out. the umpire of that game informed us that it was our player's responsibility to know the number of outs and since he left the base he was out.

Wonder if anyone has any thoughts on the situation, if you need further information please let me know

thank you,
Dave