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Sun Aug 22, 2004, 09:43pm
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Quote:
MLB UMPIRE MANUAL PROCEDURES AND INTERPRETATIONS Office of the Commissioner of Baseball Copyright ® 2002 Office of the Commissioner of Baseball All rights reserved. Developed by the Joint Committee on Training Ralph E. Nelson, Jr., Chairman Frank Pulli Steve Palermo Tom Lepperd Randy Marsh Tim McClelland Mark Hirschbeck The Joint Committee on Training wishes to express gratitude to the following umpires who contributed significantly to the development of this Manual: Jeff Nelson Jim Reynolds Editing, Design and Layout by Tom Lepperd Notwithstanding the MLBUM ruling that says to call this play type B obstruction, I agree with your rationale that the play deserves a more aggressive penalization because of the unsportsmanlike nature of the infraction. Sometimes you have to not let the rules get in the way of doing the right thing. 
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Sun Aug 22, 2004, 09:55pm
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Sal,
With all due respect, this cannot be Type A obstruction. At the time of the obstruction, the ball was in the air, true. However the ball was in the air as the result of the batter hitting the ball. The only play being made at that point was on the BR. It was his ball that was hit and the outfielder was making a play on the BR by catching his flyball and recording an out on the BR. The note you refer to in 7.06 (a) refers to a thrown ball in flight Quote:
The call of obstruction in this case was made while a ball was in the air, but the play being made on that ball in the air was being made on the BR, since it was his fly ball. How can you argue, if a fly ball is in the air and obstruction is called relating to F3, that a play was being made on F3? I don't think you can really because the play is going to be made on the BR, by catching his fly ball. I agree with you in wanting to punish the defense, which is why I recommend ejecting the offender. Quote:
__________________
Well I am certainly wiser than this man. It is only too likely that neither of us has any knowledge to boast of; but he thinks that he knows something which he does not know, whereas I am quite conscious of my ignorance. At any rate it seems that I am wiser than he is to this small extent, that I do not think that I know what I do not know. ~Socrates
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Sun Aug 22, 2004, 10:01pm
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Dave,
Thanks for taking the time to type the inside cover. Although it is a little dated (2002), I would tend to believe that the rule in question here probably has not changed since then. However, if that is how the rule is stated in the MLB UMPIRE MANUAL PROCEDURES AND INTERPRETATIONS, then the Mariners may have a legitimate argument. I thought the phrase you ended your post "Sometimes you have to not let the rules get in the way of doing the right thing" was an intersting one. I wonder if MLB agreed with your statement because they haven't yet done anything with the protest... or have they officially denied it??? Jim Evans talked about "defining moments" at umpire school - plays that stirred up a lot of conversation and sometimes, controversy. I think he called them defining moments because they make us look at the rules that govern the game and how they perhaps need to be changed to keep up with the changing ways of the game. This play, in my eyes, is a defining moment and atleast, calls for a change in the MLB Umpire Manual on how the penalty should be handled. Just my "amateur" opinion.
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Sun Aug 22, 2004, 10:19pm
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Kaliix,
You bring up some very good points regarding a batted ball in flight on the BR vs. a thrown ball in flight on a rundown. I think we (myself, you, Atl Blue, Gee, Dave Hensley, etc) all bring up some valid arguments for both sides of this issue. I will rest my case on this statement and you guys can take it for what it worth (probably not much)... I am not an umpire who "takes the law into my own hands" however, I will not let a player with unfair intentions get the benefit of a call after blantently and delibertly attempting to cheat his way to get an advantage. By the book, atleast the MLB Manual anyways, Emmel may have enforced the penalty incorrectly and if so, the protest should be upheld and the game replayed from that point. However, the Interpretation in that manual, in my "amateur" opinion, should be changed immediately so that the game is not compromised by a "loop hole" act by another player. Great discussion everyone!!
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Sun Aug 22, 2004, 11:11pm
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Sal:
Dave beat me to the Title Page. As you can see, it is a very "official" source. It is also not available to the public, and I'm not even sure if it is available to the teams (although it should be - these aren't "umpire secrets" in here). Much of the MLBUM came from the PBUC Umpire Manual, which is available to the public. However, the above case play is NOT in the PBUC manual. Both the MLBUM and the PBUC manual both talk about the "delayed" type A obstruction about which you discussed. However, in both, they talk about a batter-runner that is obstructed before reaching first. Nowhere does it say anything about a runner being obstructed while the ball is in the air and calling it "delayed type A". The reason is, with a batted ball in the air, how can a runner be type A obstructed? He can't, because with the batted ball in the air, no one is making a play on the runner. They can't, the defense doesn't have the ball. There is no such thing, by definition, of type A obstruction on a runner while a batted ball is still in the air. The reason the "delayed type A" is needed for the batter-runner is because 7.06a specifically says if a batter-runner is obstructed before reaching first, it is type A obstruction. Well, cooler heads prevailed in the interpretations, and the professional interpretation is now to delay type A on a batter-runner if the batted ball is still in the air, the reasoning being if the ball is caught, then obviously, the obstruction had nothing to do with the play. Call it a "legal fiction". In Evans Manual, the ONLY time he says to call a "delayed type A" is when the batter-runner is obstructed on a ball that is still in the air. If the ball is on the ground, kill the play. Evans also gives three examples of runners in a rundown when obstruction occurs. In all three examples, he says the play is killed immediately, as it is type A obstruction. Emmel had his heart in the right place. Unfortunately, he doesn't have the rule to back him up. Does the rule need to be changed? That may be. In the mean time, am I bashing a "fellow ump"? Well, if it were my crew, maybe I would try to find a way to defend the call. But I am a ticket buying fan of MLB, and as such, he isn't a "fellow blue", Emmel is a professional on the field, paid a lot of money to know the rules, and he blew one. It happens, I'm not out to hang the guy, but I'm not going to defend him either. Just like him, I have to call 'em like I see 'em. And I saw Emmel blow this call. As for the "protest", there was no protest. There was a lot of complaining, b*itching, moaning, and griping, but there was no official protest. Melvin was told by Emmel and Joe West that the obstruction was a "judgment call" and obviously, judgment calls are not protestable. But if Melvin had said, "I'm not protesting the obstruction call, I am protesting the awarding of home, as this is a type B obstruction, and no automatic award is applied", he MIGHT have had a chance. Of course, if Emmel said, "I am awarding home because in my JUDGMENT, the runner would have scored without the obstruction", then again, the call would not have been protestable, but Emmel would have looked like an idiot. But no, Melvin was too busy arguing that it was not obstruction at all, which, a) he was not going to win, and b) was wrong. Managers need a coach on the bench that know the rules as well as the umpires. On the PGA tour, it has been suggested by Tom Meeks (Rules Director of the USGA) that players pay their caddies to go to the USGA/PGA Rules Clinics, so that SOMEONE on their "team" knows the rules and can keep the golfer out of trouble. I think baseball managers should do the same thing: have a coach on the team attend training, clinics, maybe even umpire school so that SOMEONE in the dugout knows the rules, and knows when to ask the right questions. Just suppose, in the Mariners/Devil Rays game in question, Melvin had come out of the dugout saying, "Guys, OK, you called obstruction on my shortstop. That's judgment, I can't argue that. But you awarded Crawford home as if it were type A obstruction, when clearly it was type B. If so, I think I would like to protest the award." West, Emmel and the rest of the crew get together without the managers and say, "Damn, I think he's right. I guess we need to put the runner back." Of course, Pinella would have to get run, because you know he would be coming out of the other dugout as soon as the umps unscored the run. But no, no manager thinks that much about the rules, and Melvin comes out arguing the judgment part of the call, which immediately turns into a dead end. Then he shoots his mouth off at the plate comference the next night and gets run before the game ever starts. If you read what West and McKean say after the game, their defense of the call (and their apparent contradictions between what was said to the managers and what was said to the public an hour later) was laughable. The simple answer is, Emmel blew the call and West didn't talk him out of it. That's bad umpiring, and MLB will never come out and say if Emmel, West and crew were ever "disciplined" for their error.
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Sun Aug 22, 2004, 11:38pm
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I didn't see the game or the play, but here is what is available on mlb.com in the wrap:
"Tied at 1 in the bottom of the 10th inning, reliever Clint Nageotte loaded the bases on a single and two walks with one out. The rookie right-hander did exactly what he needed when former Mariner Tino Martinez lofted a fly ball into shallow left field. Raul Ibanez caught it and fired accurately home, sending Carl Crawford scuttling back to third. Relief turned into bewilderment when the umpires got together and ruled shortstop Jose Lopez, covering third base while Willie Bloomquist lined up for a cutoff throw, had obstructed the runner's view of the catch, awarding Crawford home plate to deliver Tampa Bay a 2-1 victory. By rule, Lopez was charged with an error on the play, sending Seattle to its seventh loss in eight games. [deleted comments from Bob Melvin and players denigrating the call, denying obstruction, etc.] Melvin's initial thought was to protest, but because obstruction is a judgment call, he had no recourse with the umpires. "In this case, both the shortstop and the third baseman attempted to impede the runner from seeing when the ball was caught by screening him from the play," crew chief Joe West said. "When a play is being made on the obstructed runner, and this happened subsequent to the catch when the throw went home, then that runner is entitled to one base beyond the base he held at the time of the play. When they made the play on him, because of the obstruction, you have to score him. That's the rule." My understanding of the rule is that blocking a runner's vision is obstruction. If the screening lasts only to the moment of the catch, then it would be type B. However, it seems to me that if the screening continues into the throw, then it is clearly additionally type A. Once a throw is initiated, and it goes either to home or third, the runner is being played on. In this kind of obstruction, it seems appropriate for the umpire to use a type B mechanic--that's how the obstruction started. Dave
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Mon Aug 23, 2004, 01:18am
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Atl Blue,
You state your case very well and according to the way the interpretation is written in the MLB Umpire Manual, you have a legitimate protest. From the moment I saw the play, I thought Emmel made a great call to point out the obstruction. Believe it or not, I initially thought it was Type B obstruction and that he enforced the penalty incorrectly (see my posts on Umpire.org under the Professional section. After a few days of pondering, I realized that in order to prevent players from doing this all of the time, perhaps Emmel was correct in issuing an automatic one base award. However, after becoming aware of the play described in the MLBUM, it seems like he may have "overstepped his bound" (not on the obstruction call, but enforcing the incorrect penalty). Once again, thanks guys for the great discussion and I hope we have more like this in the future - I think we all benefit from each other's knowledge and experiences. Take care.
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Mon Aug 23, 2004, 03:38am
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Quote:
__________________
Jim Need an out, get an out. Need a run, balk it in.
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