[Tim C]

As umpires that primarily work games played by non-professional players we are placed in a very interesting position.

Where the National Federation of High Schools and the NCAA have a system for obtaining “official” interpretations, those who work under OBR do not have that luxury.

As a member of another umpire resource group we have been in the most interesting debate as of late:

“What position do people of “authoritative opinion” hold in the interpretation of The Official Rules of Baseball”?

We know that through the FED Rule Book, Case Book, and two mechanics manuals we know that FED has taken a stab at defining what is meant by their rules. If you add their website and the official quarterly newsletters we have a group that makes an effort to convey to their tens of thousands of umpires that work their games what is meant by their rulings.

We know that with an official NCAA Baseball Website that we can extrapolate current rulings and mechanics from one source. The NCAA also sends out very informative notifications during a sports season helping the officials of a certain sport understand just where the NCAA high-ups “want” things called.

In OBR we are left in a “never-never” land.

We have the Official Rule Book and the PBUC manual.

That’s it, that’s the LIST!

Sooooo, now we touch on “authoritative opinion.”

As near I can see there are three major authorities dealing with OBR:

Jim Evans – author of the JEA and once rumored to be involved in the potential re-write of the OBR.

Rick Roder – co-author of the Jaksa/Roder manual on professional interpretations of OBR.

Carl Childress – author of several umpire books and the definitive study of the Differences between the three major rules groups.

Bubbling close to those three would be:

Rich Marazzi – author of the Baseball Rules Corner in Baseball Digest. I list him slightly below the three only because his articles are just extrapolations of actual MLB rulings.

We then fall into what I call “Informed Opinion”.

This group has a large group of people that simply interpret the rules as a hobby. Sometimes they are correct, sometimes they are wrong.

This group includes:

Richard Siegal
Steve Ferix
Jim Porter
Warren Willson
Pete Booth

These people work endlessly trying to communicate the rules to us with little credit from those of us that work the games.

My major point to this post (I know some have all ready given up) is to say that all of us “think” we are right and many times are . . .however, everything we say (even that said by the authorities listed above) should be taken for what it is:

An “un-official” opinion taken from the information that is available that is shaded by our personal preferences and experience.

In closing, understand that most things written by the authoritative sources and informed opinion group are not “official” unless they are quoting an exact example of the position published by the keepers of that rule book.

I give huge credit to the group of people listed above that have the intestinal fortitude to place their feelings and research out for all of us to criticize.