[greymule]

I think it's simply that they, like most players and coaches, were ignorant to the rules when they were in high school.

When I was playing in school and college (1964-1970), I thought I knew a lot about the rules (ha ha!), and yet I wasn't even aware that separate rules existed for high school, college, and MLB. I knew that my college coach was on the NCAA rules committee, but even then I thought simply that, on the field, baseball rules were baseball rules.

I think that back then American Legion used OBR, with a few minor exceptions that didn't involve actual play. No crash rule, no FPSR, no dead ball appeals, etc.

I coached high school baseball for a couple of years after college. If we were indeed covered by FED, I'd love to see a book from those days (eBay?). At the time, I wasn't even aware that one existed. My authority was a 49-cent folded brochure of OBR rules, in very small print.