Set Poisition
 

FED Rules. I was told last night that in the set position that the non-pivot foot must be parallel with the pivot foot. I have read through all of the section on pitching multiple times and I cannot find this anywhere. What am I missing?

Nothing. It's not there.

Response
 

Thank you for your response. How do I go about handling this? In our state, we are allowed to protest a misapplication of a rule but must do it in 10 minutes or less before the next pitch. The onus is on the coach to show the umpire the rule. How do I go about proving something that I am told is there if it is not there? If the umpire simply wants to wait me out and say, "It's in there somewhere" I have no way of showing different. I always strive to be professional with umpires but I don't know how to handle a situation such as this.

Just show him the "foot position" requirements in 6-1 (I think -- it's been a while since I've had the rule book out). Note to him that the PIVOT foot must be parallel to the RUBBER, and that the NON-PIVOT foot only need be closer to the plate than the pivot foot.

Print this and show him the illustration on the left of the last row on page 3:http://www.taso.org/data/rule/baseba...n23-3-2014.pdf

Others have adequately answered the rules aspect of your question, but I’ve got a different concern...

Are you saying that you have 10 minutes from the time you protest to prove your point and resolve the protest or that you have up to 10 minutes after the issue you want to protest to formally protest it?

In either case, I’m of the opinion that what you’re describing isn’t really how protests are designed to work, but I’ll assume you meant the first version, which basically boils down to being a 10 minute period to argue with the umpire to try to prove him wrong using the rule book. Most situations involving a coach pulling out a rule book don’t result in a positive outcome.

I’ve been involved in 4 protests and have a record of 2-1 (1-1 as an umpire with 1 that was dropped due to the “offended” team winning and 1-0 as a coach). I can tell you in all of these situations the umpires were so sure of their rulings, there was no amount of arguing or rule book researching that would have changed anyone’s mind in 10 minutes including the one I missed. It was quite a few years ago in my early days, and I learned from it, but I still remember it because of how sure I was that I was right up until the protest committee informed me I wasn’t.

That said, a protest is designed to allow an outside party to review the situation and determine if the rule was applied appropriately. Depending on the circumstances the game is completed and then if the protest is upheld the game is replayed from the point of the protest. If this is not practical, the game can be delayed while the outside party makes a decision (usually in tournament situations, where you can’t really put the entire tournament on hold so a game can be replayed). To your question of how to handle these types of situations, you might point out to someone the difficulties created by using the existing procedure for protests.

I've seen it before and it *can* work well. It's used when there's no "protest committee" (or TD) on-site, and where they don't want to bring the teams back to play another day.

So, the coach is given 10 minutes to find the rule in the book, without this action being seen as "showing up the umpire."

And, yes, it's not perfect -- the umpire can refuse to believe what's in black-and-white, or the correct ruling might be based on some interp that's not in the book (or not clear in the book). But, it can help.