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Tue Feb 06, 2001, 10:37pm
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Whenever I come across a post on one of these boards that strikes me as very insightful and direct, I save it into a "collective wisdom" subfolder in my umpiring folder. After a year and a half of doing this, there are only 22 posts in this folder. This is one of them, and it's one of the best.
================= Posted by Bob Pariseau on October 18, 1999 at 11:28:28: I'm going to try to give you a serious answer. It's in the nature of the game. Football officials own each and every call as a crew. If any crew member believes a call has been blown, or that he has seen something important that the calling official may have missed, he is REQUIRED to speak up and challenge the call. The crew must then decide, as a crew, what the proper call was. It's NECESSARY to do this in football because some actions are legal, or illegal, based upon other actions possibly occurring quite some distance away -- in the area of responsibility of another official. It's POSSIBLE to do this in football because the nature of the action, and the results of an infraction act on a whole play in its entirety. That is, the play stands, or a specific new result is imposed. It is never the case (please any football guys out there, bear with me if I've mistated some technicality), it is NEVER the case that only part of a play is "corrected". ------------------------------------------- But Baseball is not Football. The action in baseball involves a series of plays and real-time rulings. Each play and ruling intimately affects subsequent playing actions. Both the offense and defense key off of each call, as it is made, to determine the best course of action for subsequent play. This, to a large extent, is what makes baseball Baseball. Change it if you will, but you will end up with a different sport. Yes, it is important to make the call Right. But it is MORE important, absolutely essential in fact, to make the call Right Now. If the call isn't made, what are the players supposed to do?? So the philosophy of officiating in baseball MUST, by the nature of the game, be different from the philosophy of officiating in football. Baseball officials makes calls as individuals. They may seek help, if there is time, but they are still individually responsible for acting on that help as they deem best -- they still own each and every call they are responsible for. Indeed, by RULE no umpire may seek to challenge or overturn the call of another umpire. This Rule, frequently misunderstood, has nothing to do with maintaining the "dignity" of umpires. Instead, it establishes the feel and flow of the game. Each umpire's calls DEFINE what happened on his portion of the play. Except in rare circumstances, nothing will change that. The players and coaches, as much as they may disagree with any given call, all know they must continue the playing action as if what the umpire called actually happened just as he called it. Because there's no other way to do it. There's no time to conference. And you can't correct "just part" of a play without opening up an ungodly can of worms about all the other "what if's" affecting the balance of play. That is, most judgment calls are simply not reversible. NOT because it makes the umpires look bad to reverse a call, but simply because there is no fair way to do it given subsequent playing action -- or lack of action -- directly resulting from the blown call. ----------------------------------- Professional baseball attempts to provide enough umpires so that everything that needs to be seen will be seen properly. The large crews used in post season play are trained to know their areas of responsiblity and take it as a matter of personal pride that they will be in the proper position to see every play. Coordination in a large crew can be tough. Add more umpires and it gets tougher. Not to mention that the players have to play around the umpires as moving obstacles. But sometimes the umpire responsible for a call simply can not be in the right position. This is what happened last night. The second base umpire is responsible for making the tag/no-tag call at that point. He is INDIVIDUALLY responsible for making it. If he finds himself screened from the play he STILL has to make it. If he finds himself screened he may consider going for help, but he has to balance this against two significant factors. First there may be no TIME to get help. The play may require an immediate call. That was true in the play last night. Had he called "NO TAG!!" then there was still time for the fielder to throw to second to put out the lead runner. Wait another second for an exchange between umpires and it is probably too late. Second he must decide whether any other umpire is in position to give him significant help. In this case ONLY the first base umpire is close enough to convincingly offer help (the plate umpire or the right field line umpire may have an opinion, but they are so far away from the play that their opinion is not very believable even if it later turns out to have been right). But the first base umpire is directly across this play from the second base umpire (getting in position to make HIS call on the subsequent play at first). That is, he ALSO doesn't have the crucial "side" angle to clearly see the gap between glove and runner. He MIGHT have seen it, but the second base umpire can't defer to him because it is not obvious that he MUST have seen it. ---------------------------------- So the second base umpire is forced, by the nature of the play, to make a call based on his best judgment -- even knowing that he has a lousy angle to see the critical moment of the play. He uses whatever evidence he can gather in an instant. How does the runner react? How does the fielder react? In this case, Knoblauch successfully drew the call he wanted by pretending he'd actually made the tag and, thus, had no further concern for the lead runner. That was sneaky and thoroughly professional on his part. And this time it worked. As it turns out, the umpire blew the judgment. He's probably made that call correctly dozens of times in regular season games, but no one will ever remember those. This, too, is baseball. The human factor in officiating is part of what makes the game what it is. --------------------------------------- So what do you suggest be done about it? Again, if the second base umpire takes the time to ask for help, the fielder must act as if the call is going to go against him -- otherwise he'll not have time to throw to 2B to play on the lead runner. And if he actually tagged the runner, that is an unfair result. If the play is reviewed afterwards, what is a fair "correction"? Put the runner on 2B and let the out at 1B stand? Is that really fair? Had the umpire NOT called the out on the tag, the fielder could still have played for the out at 2B. Should the defense suffer the consequences of this reversed call? The bottom line is that there IS NO FAIR CORRECTION possible on this play. That means the play has to stand as called. And that, gentle reader, is baseball. --Bob ==================== Addendum: How does this apply to Moose's "True Confessions" thread below? (In that play, Moose called a runner out, but did not see exactly when the ball was dropped. His partner saw that the call should have been safe.) Carl has taken the above reasoning and applied it to come up with this list of the ONLY calls that may be changed:
A few umpires thought that, in Moose's play, the call COULD be changed. Ergo, they disagreed with the above list. However, if one looks at the TYPES of calls on that list, these are calls that can ALWAYS be changed if wrong. If you allow Moose's call to be changed, why not allow it in all situations? The changability of a call then becomes a big grey area, where the umpire must decide if the call changed anything in the play. We then get to play fantasy baseball. Unfortunately, we just blew our first round pick. Instead, we must look at the TYPES of calls that are changable. Is a tag out judgement call changable, regardless of if there is ensuing, continuous action? If not, it is changable in no situations. In closing, PLEASE read Bob P's wise words and apply that logic to the situation. Hopefully that will help this situation out. P-Sz [Edited by Patrick Szalapski on Feb 6th, 2001 at 09:46 PM] 
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