I ain't letting it go

[Warren Willson]

Originally posted by rex
You might be the messanger but that ain't the message. THERE IS A REASON.With people like Earl Weaver you just don't and can't say JUST BECAUSE.

Rex, you simply CANNOT use the Official Baseball Rules as evidence for why the PBUC made a decision. That's what's known as "circular reasoning". Since each and every PBUC official interpretation becomes the Official Baseball Rule on the subject, what you are saying is let's use the rules themselves to help us decide why this is a rule. Illogical and false reasoning.

If the PBUC stated its reasons, as Dennis Donnelly said, then there would be no need for the discussion. Absent that explanation "from the horse's mouth", there can be no inference drawn from elsewhere in the rules themselves to prove why a particular rule came to be. Simply saying 4.09(b) proves that the batter-runner must advance so that's why they allow 4 outs is a non sequitur. First of all, 4.09(b) doesn't clearly establish that the batter-runner is required to advance on the base path after a 3rd out, and even if it did it wouldn't necessarily follow logically that this had anything at all to do with the PBUC's decision to allow the non-appeal 4th out!

Rex, this is a windmill not an ogre and so it's not worth "tilting" at with your lance. What we have been debating is not WHY the PBUC made the ruling, but instead HOW that ruling conflicts with all of those that have gone before to become rules, and even with the ab initio fundamentals of the game. Even before base ball became baseball, 3 hands out was the limit for both the offense and the defense. THAT is why this decision is so incongruent and that is why this debate continues to rage.

Cheers,