CAN AN UMPIRE EVER CHANGE HIS/HER CALL?

[akalsey]

An official's call never costs a team the game. I'm saying this as a multi-sport coach. In your case it may have felt that way because the call came at a crucial moment. The call eliminated your chance of scoring another run and thus winning the game. But that out was only one of many during the course of the game. If you had any one of those outs back, you might have been able to win.

You don't blame a kid and say their inning-ending stikeout with the bases loaded cost the team the game because that out was only one. You don't say that the error by F6 that allowed the runner to move into scoring position cost you the game. Likewise a single call (or even multiple calls) by an official doesn't cost you the game. It might put you at a disadvantage, but no more so than other things that occur during a game.

During a soccer game once, we had a variety of bad calls from the refs. Most seemed to go against us, although the opposing coach probably thought they mostly were against him. But we also had a variety of mistakes by the players, including a forward tripping over his feet while shooting from 4 feet at a completly open goal. If that hadn't happened, we would have won, despite the calls from the officials.

[Edited by akalsey on Jul 14th, 2004 at 11:02 PM]