LL Rules - appealing an out at home plate

[LilLeaguer]

Originally posted by LDUB
JM's protest is the same thing. He saw something, and he assumed the umpire saw the same thing. [/B]

I feel confident, if JM actually acts anything like he posts, that he usually goes out onto the field with two goals:

1. Convince the umpire to change the call.
2. Bait the umpire into a winnable protest.

His SOP, it appears, is to discuss first what the umpire judged to have (or have not) seen, then to ask the umpire to indicate which rules he was enforcing. JM seeks to find a discrepancy between the judgment and the rules. If he finds one, and he can't convince the umpire to reverse the call, he now has ammunition for a convincing protest.

Pete Booth certainly gets this, though I find I'm interested (along with JM) to know if Pete was advocating that umpires lie to avoid the trap that JM sets.

In JM's sitch, the umpire did not grant him the request to discuss. (It actually appears that the ball was already dead.) While an umpire can refuse to discuss a call with a manager, I think that a manager always has the right to protest the game.

I am curious, though, how JM would have worded the protest without first having trapped the umpire.

-LL