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Originally posted by Dakota
Quote:
Originally posted by IRISHMAFIA
ASA
10-8.A. Umpires may suspend play when, in their judgment, condition justify such action.
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Absolutely, but unless the thrown bat injured someone or interferred with the play, it is unlikely my judgment would have justified such action.
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10-1.J The plate umpire and base umpire will have equal authority to:
3. Eject or disqualify a player, coach, manager or
other team member from the game for violation of
rule or flagrant misconduct.
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Agreed. Ejection is justified for throwing a bat in anger. I wasn't disputing that.
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10-1.K The umpire will declare the batter or runner out, without waiting for an appeal for such decision, in all cases where such player is retired in accordance with these rules.
These are the rules cited. These permit the dead ball ruling, the ejection, but the shortcoming is making the connection with the first two and the third allowing the out.
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Citing 10-1.K ("L" typo in the 2002 book) for the case play we are discussing is a force fit of the first order. In fact, I'll be stronger in my words: it is fiction. All this rule says is the umpire is to declare retired players out unless an appeal is necessary. "Retired" and "ejected" are not the same thing.
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Since I have been instructed by my RUIC to make the call in this manner, I will instruct umpires in my state to do the same and rule similarly upon the receipt of any protest. If you want something on paper, simply refer to the test and CB play 10.8-1.
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Fine, but that does not alleviate all the issues. This is not the way to get a well thought through rule change on the books. This seems little different from the various half-baked local rules we have to deal with from time to time. With only a single case play on a guidelines section of the rules, there are way too many holes in this for it to be applied with any consistency. Are all USCs dead balls? If so, what base to runners return to, TOP or TODB? Are all USCs outs? What about defensive USC? Is that a dead ball, too?
Was this even proposed to the rules committee?
Is there some perceived emergency they are responding to? Without that, like I said, back-dooring a rule change through case plays is a very bad idea. I expect more of ASA than this.
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Yes, a proposal was made, but having not been in Reno, I'm not really sure what happened to it. However, rules are not passed by a "rules committee" in ASA. The "committee" reviews proposed changes then offers it's recommendations to the full body at the National Convention. There are numerous reasons why some changes are approved and some not. This "interpretation" came about because it was realized that a player or team could literally start a brawl at the end of the game with an USC act and it not effect the outcome of the game. It isn't as if the umpires want to determine the outcome of a game, but there should be some sort of deterent to keep that from happening. I was first made aware of this train of thought last August at the Interservice and expected something to happen.
As I stated earlier, I'm still trying to digest some of this. To offer an answer to the question to which I do have one, yes this applies to all USC calls. Since part of the rule is to deny a team from scoring a run in such a circumstance, I believe it is probably TOP and a BR who was not the player ejected will probably be placed on 1B and only those forced will move up.