Changing Calls

[Warren Willson]

Originally posted by PeteBooth
There are certain calls, just by there very nature that cannot be changed and they involve continous action plays.

---[snip]---

Therefore, I would sum up as saying that a call can be changed if there is no continuous action to worry about.

Pete, I understand where you are coming from but I feel it is important to reiterate that umpires don't make the rules UNLESS the rules themselves fail to provide a solution to a specific problem. That is the effect of OBR 9.01(c). Now in the case of changing calls, be they judgment decisions or not, the rules clearly DO provide for the specific problem. That is what the List of 5 Legally Changeable Calls was all about!

As an individual umpire, you cannot LEGALLY decide to change a call because, in your judgement, "there is no continuous action to worry about". That rationale might be a good justification for why the rule makers have allowed certain calls to be changed, but it is not a valid reason to allow the individual umpire to LEGALLY change any call on the diamond, especially a judgement decision, when that call or decision is not previously allowed to be changed by rule or interpretation.

We already have a list of 5 calls that can be legally changed. If you want to ADD to that list, that's fine but you'd need to show where there is support for that either in the rules, official interpretations or at the very least the authoritative references of JEA and J/R. Otherwise, anything that does NOT appear in the list simply cannot be LEGALLY changed, despite whether the absence of continuing action would make such a change easy to effect.

Cheers,

[Edited by Warren Willson on Feb 22nd, 2001 at 04:58 PM]