Dead ball... Ball!

[tribefan1952]

I made a very unpopular call this afternoon. Dead ball... Ball! I'm interested in your feedback. Two good teams playing. Top of 6th. Bases loaded. 2 outs. 2-1 game. Tying run on 3rd. Batter gets hit by pitch. Doesn't move at all. He might have been frozen. Pitcher was throwing a lot of sweeping curves. I just felt that he stood and waited for it to hit him. I also thought he was pretty quick to drop his bat and begin running to first. Fans were cheering. I probably waited a little too long to call it and it didn't help that the coach from the defensive team was yelling about him not trying to get out of the way. I'm sure that it looked like he talked me into it, but he certainly didn't. I was planning to call it a dead ball, ball, from the start, but for some reason I hesitated for a second or two. Very unpopular call. Of course, the kid popped out for the 3rd out on the next pitch. He was really angry. He pitched the bottom of the 6th and gave up about 4 runs on several wild pitches. He also hit a couple batters (who did try to get out of the way... naturally I heard about that by the fans.) Finally, I told the catcher to go out and settle him down. I'm interested in your feedback.