Protests and Authoritative Opinion Revisited.

[Warren Willson]

Originally posted by Jim Porter

Sounds to me like, "Humor the manager before chunking him," rather than, "You must accept the protest."

To me, anyhow.

It may have become lost somewhere in the crossfire, Jim, but the point I was originally making is that the umpire has the authority to turn down a protest. If after turning the protest down several times, the manager still "insists" in lodging it or "perseveres in his demand to protest", then it is preferable to note the protest (I don't use the term accept in this case - I know it's semantics, but the difference is important when it gets to the level of dispute resolution) rather than ejecting the manager or further holding up the game.

As you know, at your prompting I made a point elsewhere that noting/accepting an invalid protest is far preferable to ejecting the manager. In the case we discussed, the ejection issue was only raised because the manager had refused to allow his team to continue playing, even after the protest was rejected. I read that as objecting to the original judgement decision that he wanted protested. Besides, I hoped by ejecting the manager for dissent that his assistant might be more amenable to bringing the team back onto the diamond, rather than having to forfeit the game as things eventuated.

I see the following in order of the umpire's resorting to them:

1. Reject the protest where possible

2. Note/Accept the invalid protest if necessary

3. Eject the manager if unavoidable

4. Forfeit the game as the last resort.

Please don't ANYONE think I am advocating this course in terms of the game situation which started this thread. This is only a GENERAL guideline for the use of these tools, in the listed order.

Cheers,