Quote:
Originally Posted by Manny A
Yeah, after the explanation, the coach kept repeating, "Seven eleven. Seven eleven," as if to either remind herself that they sound alike, or to subtly chastise me for not understanding the difference.
Candidly, she could've been the one who made the mistake, and actually said "Ten for Eleven". It's possible she first wanted to replace 11, but then changed her mind as she approached me, only to verbalize her original intent. Who knows?
I should've repeated back to her the way I normally announce changes to coaches and scorers. I verbalize "11" as "One-One," not "eleven." For some reason, I didn't do this with her, and it came back to bite me. Oh well, lesson definitely learned...
|
Manny,
I had a similar situation in a District LL tournament game. The Home Team Manager came to and made a change that I repeated back to him in the bottom of the 4th inning.
Top of the 6th inning ended with the player not receiving their 1 at bat and even though the HT was winning 8-2 and were celebrating the win, the VT Coach came out and asked for a protest that the player was in violation of not having his 1 at bat.
I went to the TD and informed him of the protest, (no need to go to my partners since the were not involved in the change).
Since this was back in the day when this type of violation of LL's Mandatory Play rule was a forfeit, it went quickly to District, to Region, to Williamsport who upheld the forfeit as my line up is the official one.
The HT Manager and Coaches were screaming at me during the process and all I said to them was that I repeated their change back to them so why was I the one who misunderstood.
Manny, I am sure you have successfully made hundreds, if not thousands of changes over the years you have umpired. Don't beat yourself up over this. You did what you were told to do, plain and simple.
The only change I have made in my method of making changes is to have the manager making the change on defense, make them with me by the scorekeeper and have them confirm back to both of us the change. It is obvious on offensive changes because LL requires them to be made at the time of the at bat, so there is virtually no chance of a wrong change.