[JRutledge]

Originally Posted by tcarilli

Ok, I'll bite. You have defined very narrow parameters for this conversation. You have said that you, to paraphrase, were not looking for an opinion on this. Given that the word conversation means, amongst other things, exchanging opinions, I quit the conversation and wondered why others continued.

If instead this was debate, you set the parameters in such a way as no-one could possibly meet your objections within those parameters, then only you could emerge from the debate "victorious." You insisted over and over again on the word always, you even bold the word in one post. While most of the rest of us were much less strict. Given that nothing in officiating, or life for that matter, is always, because of various contingencies when finite manuals or rules meet infinite possibilities. You can't ever be wrong, mistaken, whatever word you like here, when you insist on always. You have essentially asked those of who are in disagreement with you to prove a negative. We can not demonstrate that amongst the class of all mechanics manuals ever written or to be written that the PU will always have responsibility for RLI. This is a logically impossibility. Instead many of pointed out the difficulty in giving this responsibility to the BU in any #-man system. You claimed that the BU would not have a problem in sharing this responsibility equally with the PU. We argued that there are many reasons why the PU should have a more than equal share of this responsibility. Your response was, basically, I don't care. Why can't you baseball guys ever get it straight that all responsibilities should be shared equally all the time? We offered an opinion to that and you responded that you didn't want our opinions.

I mostly certainly understand the difference between asking questions and giving opinions, I, and others, I think misunderstood your intentions until you made them clear. You were not seeking an answer only to express your opinion. Fair enough. When your intentions became clear, there was no need to continue the conversation. You gave a response that, for all intents and purposes, means I don't want to talk about this anymore. I heard that message loud and clear, hence my response in post 29. I was surprised that others did not understand your message, as I think you intended it.

Please note that I have only referred to your writings and my interpretations of those writings. I prefer not to make arguments ad hominem, and work hard not to.

I will put it this way. If you want to do what you do or believe what you believe, go right ahead. At the end of the day I really could give a damn. This sport is my least favorite to work and often discussions like this are the reason that is the case most of the time. You cannot have a discussion with people like you because someone told you to do something years ago. Well I was told a lot of things to do and I do not do those things anymore because clinicians or trainers decided what once was advocated does not work. Just like the "Get it right philosophy." People take a lot of things in baseball too far. I just was stating that the BU in rare situations should make this call. If that is a sin that call me a sinner, because I really did not think that would be that controversial. This is my 18th year of officiating and I worked a State Final in this sport not doing things that the powers that be do not approve of. Again, I just said it was rare and I said there is no support that only the PU makes this call or always makes this call.

We will just have to agree to disagree about the rest.

Peace