Quote:
Originally posted by GarthB
You can't stick your beak in the sand and deny that two competing events may ever happen simultaneously because the Official Baseball Rules, PBUC and Jim Evans don't mention it!
No, not because anyone does not mention it. Because it's a very near physical impossibility. OBR, PBUC, Evans and others don't mention it because it was never intended to covered by rule.The rulesmakers were smart enough to understand that. They just weren't clever enough to predict others, years down the road, would parse their wording to invent a "tie goes to..."
The correct response to your ill-educated inquisitor is not "There is no tie!" He KNOWS what he saw and will only believe you incompetent if you didn't see it too!
Glad to see you agree that those who think there is a tie are ill-educated. But I don't worry about what they think or say or want me to say. If I did, I'd still be arguing that the hands aren't part of the bat.
Nope. As Carl says, everyone is entitle to their opinion but not all opinions are equal. The opinion of those who spend their lives understanding the intent of the rule book weighs heavy.
[Edited by GarthB on Jul 2nd, 2003 at 08:37 AM]
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A "...near physical impossibility"?
- Fact: The human eye cannot follow the entire track of a thrown baseball because it cannot receive and interpret the visual input as fast as the ball travels. So it leaves out "frames" of information in order to keep up.
- Fact: Human visual accuity is not good enough to discern even the smallest gap from over 15 feet away.
- Fact: The human male brain is biologically compartmentalised and so physically unable to focus on more than one thing at any time - a legacy of our historical social role and evolution as hunters.
Given those facts, are you still going to claim that ties don't exist because Evans and the rules don't mention them? Phooey! *grin*
Ties between competing events viewed with human faculties are a fact of life, even in baseball! That's why the rules are so carefully worded, to eliminate the necessity to separate those events when they occur.
Rule book terminology, my friend. Nothing beats it for handling objections, especially moronic ones, and that's Evan's own oft-stated advice on the subject too!
You should know that failure to mention a subject in a book does NOT constitute the passing of an authoritative opinion on the unmentioned subject. Add that to your personal list of logical fallacies, GB. Know why encyclopaedia's have annual updates? Because knowledge grows with time and experience. When was JEA's last annual update? When was the rule book last updated? Don't worry, you'll get there! *BIG grin*
Cheers