Quote:
Originally Posted by jicecone
Nothing personnal but, this is another rule put in by people that don't have a clue and think that the umpire is out there to babysit. Believe me if it gets enforced at the wrong time it will be changed.
Next thing you know , they will want to use aluminum bats!!!!
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Do you work college baseball? I ask this with all seriousness, because I have first-hand account of the difference pre-stopwatch and post-stopwatch.
I only work D3 baseball, so no TV contracts, etc.
3-4 years ago, teams would slowly get back onto the field. It would take *forever* to get through the between innings stuff. You'd see teams huddle at the mound every half inning and some teams huddling at the dugout before going on defense. The only recourse for an umpire was to cut warmup pitches and that would start a different kind of craphouse and would have coaches calling assignors and complaining.
Now? They *run* onto the field, complete the 5 tosses in many times less than 45 seconds, and we start the next half-inning. It's like night and day. And I don't have to enforce this rule once. If the team takes a few extra seconds but it appears they're hustling, I use common sense and pretend the time hasn't expired. But the watch has made things so much nicer at the college level and it would be *easy* to put this in place at the HS level.
And notice that they give 90 seconds (measured from the last defender crossing the foul line) so the expectation isn't onerous.