[CecilOne]

Originally Posted by bretman

man, that's a long speech. That's like the gettysburg address of plate conferences.

Some of it will probably just confuse them more than they already are. And some of it is flat-out inaccurate.

If a player raises her hands, then picks up the ball, it indicates to the umpires the ball is not dead? No, not if i saw it with my own two eyeballs and and decided it was already dead first. Then it doesn't matter what the player does. All that indicates is that she picked up a dead ball.

I quit saying anything about "raising hands" in my plate conferences a long time ago. Raising hands has nothing to do with any playing rule or umpire mechanic. I see it as more of a coaching issue than an umpire duty. We're going to call it dead if we see it go into a dead ball area and we're going to keep it live if we don't. Raising hands isn't going to change that. Let their coaches tell them how to react if they're chasing a ball near the boundary lines. We're going to our same job regardless.

yyyeeaaaahhhh!!!!!