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Relevant information:
This is a reference book for umpires at all levels and for those who might want to become an umpire. It has 281 entries, 243 letter-size pages, 151,00 words plus illustrations.
If it's about baseball umpiring, you'll find in Baseball Umpires Encyclopedia. Rules, umpire rotations, game control: It's all here.
Here's a sample entry:
Phantom Double Play — It's the most famous "bad" call of all time. The shortstop gloves the ball and, as Milo Hamilton says, "Flip it! Fire it! Double play!" The fact that the second baseman "forgot" to tag the base while he had the ball has been irrelevant for about a hundred years. See phantom force, the next entry.
I first heard about this play in 1949 when I began listening to the Liberty Broadcasting System. Gordon McClendon, who called himself the "Old Scotchman" and pretended to be in his early 80s, re-created major league baseball games. He was always introduced like this: "Coming to you live from Yankee Stadium, by wire report...." We 12-year-old kids didn't know "wire report" meant Western Union telegrams. The "Old Scotchman" was 29 when I began listening to him broadcast from KLIF in Dallas.
Allow me to re-create one of Gordon's typical calls: "Doby's on first, nobody out. Lou Boudreau digs in. Lopat stretches, delivers. It's a sharp grounder to Rizzuto's left, but it's no match for him. He gobbles it up and flips to Stirnweiss for the out at second. On to Henrich at first: Out! Boudreau's not as fast as he used to be. Listen, folks, Snuffy Stirnweiss wasn't within two feet of second when he took Rizzuto's throw. But Red Jones thumbed him out anyway. Folks, that's called the phantom double play. Wait'll you get to a big league park. You'll see what I mean. Stepping in now is the right fielder, Bob Kennedy. He's hitting just ...." As I recall, Gordon rarely omitted his reference to the "imaginary" out at second.
In spite of its storied past, though, we don't see the phantom double play very often in the big leagues anymore. Every game is televised. No umpire wants to see ten replays showing him calling an out when F4 wasn't within "two feet of second." But they don't have ten TV cameras bearing down on your every move at your local park. Do your bit for safety and tradition. If the runner was going to be out, he was out.
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