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We had a similar situation (the 10-Run Rule) come up in our league early in our season this year and I was told (by an umpire) that there are no references to it in the OBR/LL rules. So apparently this rule is only in effect if it is contained in the Local Standing Rules.
While I very seldom criticize umpires and am very much aware that, especially in the volunteer organazations, we are all learning more every day I have to say that it seems strange to me that the umpire would be aware of a Local Standing Rule that the league president doesn't know about. What I am afraid may have happened here is that this 1st year league didn't know enough to write/enforce the rule and the umpire simply assumed that the rule was in force due to the fact that it seems to be a pretty standard Local Rule in most leagues.
Perhaps I was given some misinformation and the 10-Run rule is in the OBR/LL rule books. If so then this post is just so much garbage, if not then the President should not have to look into if this is a rule or not but rather why the umpires are enfocing Local Standing Rules that do not exist for the league. In our league we had a meeting with all of the umpires that would be doing our games and made sure that they were aware of our Local Standing Rules before the season even started. Perhaps this step was not covered with the umpires working in Axe's league.
In either case, I have never heard of the rule being put into effect as a "Sudden Death" type of trigger where the game is immediately over as soon as a 10-run spread exists after the number of innings required to make the game legal.
Axe, as to your oblique comments to horrible calls my philosophy has always been that if the bad calls are made against both teams there is nothing to get upset about. What I always tell my players (or more correctly their parents since the parents are usually MUCH more vocal) is that this is a human game umpired by humans and even the best will sometimes make mistakes. If this is a youth league as I suspect then you have to keep in mind that the umpires are probably learning as well. If you are serious about keeping the league going (and I hope you do) then the league may consider arranging some umpiring seminars/classes for your resident umpires rather than dismissing them out of hand. I have been involved in our league as a Manager, Coach, Board Member and occasional Umpire and know how hard it is to get volunteer umpires to start with. If you are able to get them you should (as a league) do everything you can to retain them and give them every opportunity to learn their craft that is possible.
P.S. Before anyone flames me on this, I know that there are umpire organizations where paid umpires can be contracted with little or no effort, but one of the quirks in our league is that the district we are part of very firmly believes that the umpires (like the managers, board members, etc.) should be volunteers. We work around this by compensating our junior umpires with training opportunities and supplying gear/apparel.
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