11-12 Year olds - Cal Ripken Rules
Need a little help with this one. I ejected a player tonight for malicious contact coming into home. No doubt about the call. First time in 12 years as a baseball/softball umpire I have had to throw a youth player.

The team had already used up there subs so they had no one to re-enter in that slot in the batting order. Are they allowed to finish the game with only 8 players on both offense and defense?

Yes, but every time that the ejected player's spot comes up to bat, you have to call an out. After they play with 8 they can not go back to playing with 9.

Thanks. That is how I called it. As it turned out the vacant spot never came back up. My concern was when I got home and started looking for the shorthanded rule in the book. I am looking at the 2003 book as my 2004 book is in the car. On page 18 under FORFEITED GAME it states:

- Team A and Team B play 5 complete innings when the game is forfeited at the top of the 6th when Team A is unable to place 9 players on the field.......

This paticular rule is talking about innings pitched and records etc. but it appeared to me like maybe the game should be forfeited when a team can no longer place 9 players on the field. Maybe I am reading more into this then what is there.

I don't have a Cal Ripken rule book, so I might be wrong.

I coached Babe Ruth Bambino (since changed to Cal Ripken) for many years, and also coached Babe Ruth 13-15 and 16-18. I have never known Babe Ruth baseball to allow a game to be completed with 8 players. Years ago, the rule was that if you had used your subs and you had an injured player, you were screwed, so coaches tended to save a player in case of an injury. Then, Babe Ruth got wise and changed the rule to allow re-entry of an already used substitute in the event of an injury. This was one case where an already used substitute could re-enter the game, in a different batting position than what he was in when he was in the game. It is up to the coach of the opposing team to select which already used substitute to enter the game in this case. Ejections have been a different situation. If a player is ejected when you have used all your subs, then you are screwed (ie FORFEIT). Good for Babe Ruth not to change this rule, because that means a coach has not properly coached his players on the impact of ejections. Injuries, he can not prevent, ejections he can. I have a 2002 Babe Ruth rule book, but not a more recent one. I can not find, in the 2002 book, any way to end a game with 8 players.

FORFEIT WITH 8 BEFORE 3.5/4
 

OK, here's a twist on this one. If I read my book right if you have less then 9 at game time you lose. If you started with 9 and lost one after 3.5/4 innings (Minors) you lose. What if, you lost the guy after the start of the game but before it became a regulation game? ie. Second inning? Declare it a 'no game'? What about pitching stats?

Thanks!

Re: FORFEIT WITH 8 BEFORE 3.5/4
 

You lose, by forfeit, whenever you can no longer place 9 players on the field. If not a regulation game at time of forfeit no stats count, including innings pitched, ie game did not happen statistically. If a regulation game at time of forfeit, all stats count. If the team that won by forfeit was leading count pitching records for won-loss records as they would have been. If a regulation game and the winning team was not leading at time of forfeit then there are no win-loss records to record (ie no decision for both pitchers). However, innings pitched count.

[Edited by DG on May 23rd, 2004 at 08:31 PM]

In our league, which is EXTREMELY small (only 3 teams, and all of them are barely able to field 9 players on a given night) we have a local league rule that allows a team to play with 8 (start or finish a game), but no fewer. I don't particularly like the rule, but if they didn't have it, there would be forfeits every night and the kids would never get to play.

However, I do think that Babe Ruth/Cal Ripken needs to come up with some guidelines to address this situation. This happens in our league every single year. They will draft a league of 3 or 4 teams with 12-13 players each, then 3 or 4 will quit from each team, and they'll have to redraft to make sure the teams have enough to play. Then kids will just not show up for a game. I'm sure it happens in other leagues, too.

Of course, as disorganized and "good ol' boy" as our league is, they make up rules as they go all the time and I get sick of it. Then they accuse me of being the "college boy who's called some big-time high school games and is trying to act like he knows everything." Quite honestly, I'm the only umpire in the whole league that actually has an umpire uniform or equipment, and probably the only one that has ever read a rule book. The other guys come out there in t-shirts and jeans, and don't even wear plate gear other than a mask. Then they take their check after the game and go straight to the liquor store. Shows what I'm dealing with.

BigWes - our league is slightly bigger, but when I was coming up I had the same thing. umpires didn't care about the quality of the game they called. The board were a bunch of drunks (my father included, but there were a few exceptions). We have worked hard to get that to change. I am on the board now and I umpire almost all of the games and if I don't do it, I make sure there is a quality replacement there.

Why do 3-4 players quit each team every year? I have never heard of such a thing. In 12 years of coaching baseball I had only 3 players quit during the season in this entire time.

They'll sign up to play, get picked for a team, and then never show up to a game or practice. Most of them will never pay their registration fee. Some of them choose not to play because of the team they get on or who is coaching their team. Then some of them will show up to the first couple of games and then decide they don't like it and quit. A good number of them are from very poor home situations and they don't have anyone to encourage them to play. Sometimes they will show up without their uniform, saying they "forgot" or some lame excuse like that. I know a lot of you probably can't understand what this league goes through, but this place that I have sadly lived my entire life (and hopefully when I get out of college I can find a job far, far from here) is a backwater, po-dunk town full of nothing but rednecks and wanna-be thugs. There is absolutely no class or culture here, and no one gives a flying flip if baseball succeeds.

As tough as it is to get kids to play, it's even tougher to get umpires. Like I said, I'm the only umpire they've got that is actually a real umpire that has at least some amount of training. I'm guessing that the league president, myself, and maybe one or two of the coaches are the only people in the entire league that have actually read the rulebook. We actually had an umpire in one game that was unsure of a call, and ASKED THE CROWD WHAT THEY THOUGHT. At least two of the guys that umpire have done jail time for DUI or drugs or something like that, and their umpiring checks are for nothing but drugs and booze.

Sadly, I couldn't make this stuff up. I can't imagine a league more backwards, ridiculous and apathetic than the one I umpire games for. And as much as I hate it for the kids that actually do care, the league deserves whatever happens to it. Thank God this is my last summer at home.

i am with don on this one too. you have to maintain nine players on the field at all times for the game to continue, if you drop below the number of required players the game shall be forfeited