[greymule]

There is a big difference between "let the ball drop" and "intentionally dropped the ball."

There sure is, as that soon-to-be Major League umpire learned and undoubtedly never forgot.

However, when somebody tries to learn by reading the rule book, as this man undoubtedly did, he does not always discern which words were carefully inserted for meaning and which were simply slopped down. (There are plenty of both kinds in every rule book, case book, and umpire test I've ever seen.) The play I mentioned occurred in 1971, and I don't know that things like the PBUC and J/R and BRD were available then.

To me, such a mistake is understandable. The play had probably never come up for this particular ump. I can think of plenty of rules that I had to learn through hard experience, or at least by discussing them with knowledgeable people. Instances abound in the various books of sentences and phrases that have been accepted to mean "A" but that literally say "B."