Interference or Not???

[dacodee]

Originally Posted by CoachJM

dacodee,

I'm curious about two things regarding the situation you described:

1. Did you and your partner correct your erroneous "non-call"?

2. Did you or your partner eject the coach who brought the rulebook onto the field?

JM

Hello JM,

1) No, we both simply explained to the coach that we did not have interference on the runner. We kept rummer on third.

2) No ejection either... We let the coach have his say and when he wanted us to look at the book, we kept telling him we're going to play on. It became a one sided conversation because neither one of us were going to change the "no call".

Thanks,

DAC

[UmpJM]

DAC,

Thanks.

I assume you did not change the call because, at the time, you and your partner felt it was the correct call?

Is there anything the coach could have done differently that might have resulted in you changing the call?

For example, instead of acting like a jerk (which it sounds like he did), he had:

1. calmly requested time and, after granted, politely asked you if you had seen the contact between the runner & fielder (sounds like you did)

2. asked you if, in your judgement, the fielder was making a legitimate attempt to field the ball at the time of the contact & was the player who had the best play on the ball (sounds like he was)

3. suggested that, as he understood the rules, the runner should be called out for interference because 7.09(l) says he should if he "fails to avoid" the fielder in this situation (which it does).

Would you have done anything differently?

Assuming after all of that, you informed the coach that your initial ruling was going to stand and he then informed you he was protesting your ruling, thanked you for entertaining his appeal, and promptly returned to the dugout. Would you have done anything differently then?

JM

[SanDiegoSteve]

Originally Posted by CoachJM

DAC,

Thanks.

I assume you did not change the call because, at the time, you and your partner felt it was the correct call?

Is there anything the coach could have done differently that might have resulted in you changing the call?

For example, instead of acting like a jerk (which it sounds like he did), he had:

1. calmly requested time and, after granted, politely asked you if you had seen the contact between the runner & fielder (sounds like you did)

2. asked you if, in your judgement, the fielder was making a legitimate attempt to field the ball at the time of the contact & was the player who had the best play on the ball (sounds like he was)

3. suggested that, as he understood the rules, the runner should be called out for interference because 7.09(l) says he should if he "fails to avoid" the fielder in this situation (which it does).

Would you have done anything differently?

Assuming after all of that, you informed the coach that your initial ruling was going to stand and he then informed you he was protesting your ruling, thanked you for entertaining his appeal, and promptly returned to the dugout. Would you have done anything differently then?

JM

We have a new Windy! WWTB, you are hereby dethroned! Wanna know why we have a new condescention champion? "You seen." You intentionally repeated a poster's bad grammar in your response in another thread, and immediately I knew what you were all about. You thought that would pass by unnoticed, but nope!

In this case, just because F6 contacted the runner, there could be another explanation, such as F6 initiated the contact and was intentionally trying to get an interference call because he knew he couldn't make the play. I'm not going to use pithy parenthesis to illustrate my point, however.

You weren't there, but you feel it is okay to essentially tell dacodee that he blew the call. There are instances of contact which are neither obstruction nor interference, but simply contact.

If you came out on me and started running that smack along with the parenthetical comments, you would get run, and your perfect record would then end.

[BlueLawyer]

The "fails to avoid" language in 7.09 does not change the fact that it's an umpire's judgment call. That, if for no other reason, is why you don't reverse the call on the coach's barking. The umpires may consult (and in this case it appears they did) and the calling umpire may reverse himself after that consultation, but the very last thing we (and I'm including you in that "we", Coach) want is an umpire who changes judgment calls when a coach doesn't like the call. It doesn't take much imagination to figure out where that will leave a ballgame in pretty short order.

Coach, I respect your profession. Having said that, it reads to me like you don't like how much power we (umpires) have. Years ago, I went to a basketball camp. One of the classroom sessions was presented by a DIII basketball coach, entitled "What Coaches Want from Officials". I listened as he lamented the fact that we were "part-timers", he was a "full-timer", and yet we had all the "power" on the court. That may have been true from the opening tap to the final buzzer, but coaches and ADs have a lot more power over the overall picture than we do. That's the subject for another post. Here's the point: yes, if you are on the field I am working, I can eject you. However, only the most unprofessional of umpires will eject you for "anything he wants to." There are a few of us, a VERY few, who go into a ballgame with a chip on his shoulder. They don't last long (around here, at least) because that umpire will get no good games and not move up and that umpire will usually self-select another part-time job. It's not much fun, for most of us, to yell at people and be yelled at.

With all due respect, the "power", such as it is, is all on your side. Can you IMAGINE, seriously, what would happen if, after an unsuccessful bunt, hit and run, squeeze play, whatever, I, as an umpire, came over to where ever the coach was and said, "That's just poor judgment. Why are you hitting and running in that situation? That's just terrible. You're cheating the kids." What if I just yelled down the third base line after a called third strike, "Been a strike all day! You'd better get your kids to swing at that or I'll sit them down for you!" Lord knows I have wanted, a hundred times in my career, to retort to a coach who is yelling at me, "And I suppose the three errors your players have committed this inning have nothing to do with the fact that you're behind?"

No umpire who did that even once would work again, at least not around these parts. Yet that kind of childish behavior is accepted and even expected from coaches. Outside of ejecting him, which is a one game penalty, he suffers no real adverese consequence. He keeps his job (whether volunteer or paid), and at some levels, he is given a hard time in the media (and maybe from his AD) if he doesn't "work the umps" enough.

I have never coached, and maybe I should. I have tremendous respect for coaches, especially small-school coaches here in my area, who work 60-80 hours a week from August to April. But I think you'd have to admit that there are a lot more jackasses in coaching who are allowed to be jackasses than in officiating.

Strikes and outs!

[LMan]

Originally Posted by CoachJM

1. calmly requested time and, after granted, politely asked you if you had seen the contact between the runner & fielder (sounds like you did)

2. asked you if, in your judgement, the fielder was making a legitimate attempt to field the ball at the time of the contact & was the player who had the best play on the ball (sounds like he was)

3. suggested that, as he understood the rules, the runner should be called out for interference because 7.09(l) says he should if he "fails to avoid" the fielder in this situation (which it does).



Assuming after all of that, you informed the coach that your initial ruling was going to stand and he then informed you he was protesting your ruling, thanked you for entertaining his appeal, and promptly returned to the dugout.

Funniest stuff Ive seen all week. You'd sooner see world peace than this sequence of events from a coach......heck, why not posit the Second Coming while you are at it?

[dacodee]

Originally Posted by CoachJM

DAC,

Thanks.

I assume you did not change the call because, at the time, you and your partner felt it was the correct call?

Is there anything the coach could have done differently that might have resulted in you changing the call?

For example, instead of acting like a jerk (which it sounds like he did), he had:

1. calmly requested time and, after granted, politely asked you if you had seen the contact between the runner & fielder (sounds like you did)

2. asked you if, in your judgement, the fielder was making a legitimate attempt to field the ball at the time of the contact & was the player who had the best play on the ball (sounds like he was)

3. suggested that, as he understood the rules, the runner should be called out for interference because 7.09(l) says he should if he "fails to avoid" the fielder in this situation (which it does).

Would you have done anything differently?

Assuming after all of that, you informed the coach that your initial ruling was going to stand and he then informed you he was protesting your ruling, thanked you for entertaining his appeal, and promptly returned to the dugout. Would you have done anything differently then?

JM

JM,

Knowing what I know now, I would have called interference on the runner. F6 did not intentionally run into the runner. He was just going after the ball.

At the time, I don't think there was anything he could've done for me to change the no-call. I felt the runner did nothing wrong and there was only accidental contact (no harm, play on).

I brought it up in my association meeting and there were mixed opinions. However, no one thought F6 obstructed the runner. Either, no-call or interference on runner. Since there were two outs already, runner's out and inning over.

Thanks,

DAC

[SanDiegoSteve]

Originally Posted by dacodee

JM,

Knowing what I know now, I would have called interference on the runner. F6 did not intentionally run into the runner. He was just going after the ball.

At the time, I don't think there was anything he could've done for me to change the no-call. I felt the runner did nothing wrong and there was only accidental contact (no harm, play on).

I brought it up in my association meeting and there were mixed opinions. However, no one thought F6 obstructed the runner. Either, no-call or interference on runner. Since there were two outs already, runner's out and inning over.

Thanks,

DAC

You made it sound different in the original post. You even said the runner was trying to avoid the fielder. It sounded as though F6 actually chased down the runner to contact him as he was passing by. The fact that you did not change the call also indicated that you were certain there was no interference. Now you are telling us something different.

Also, it would not be "accidental" contact, it would be perhaps "incidental" contact, which is different.

[PeteBooth]

For example, instead of acting like a jerk (which it sounds like he did), he had:

1. calmly requested time and, after granted, politely asked you if you had seen the contact between the runner & fielder (sounds like you did)

2. asked you if, in your judgement, the fielder was making a legitimate attempt to field the ball at the time of the contact & was the player who had the best play on the ball (sounds like he was)

3. suggested that, as he understood the rules, the runner should be called out for interference because 7.09(l) says he should if he "fails to avoid" the fielder in this situation (which it does).

Would you have done anything differently?

Coach IMO you are missing the point.

Umpires do not owe coaches ANY explanation on judgement calls. This isn't MLB where it's common practice to allow coaches to question anything.

1. calmly requested time and, after granted, politely asked you if you had seen the contact between the runner & fielder (sounds like you did)

I would simply say to you "Skip in MY JUDGEMENT" there was no Interference - END of Story. I would not get into a debate with you about the contact etc. Therefore, Numbers 2/3 above would be moot bcause the conversation wouldn't get that far.

Umpires do not question coaching moves and unless a rule has been mis-applied or mis interpreted we owe the coaches no explanation.

Interference is a Judgement call akin to calling balls / Strikes. We do not offer an explanation other than an occasional "That was outside" when a coach disagrees with a particular pitch and we do not owe him an explanation when we judge that there was no interference.

Pete Booth

[LilLeaguer]

Originally Posted by SanDiegoSteve

We have a new Windy! WWTB, you are hereby dethroned! Wanna know why we have a new condescention champion? "You seen." You intentionally repeated a poster's bad grammar in your response in another thread, and immediately I knew what you were all about. You thought that would pass by unnoticed, but nope!

In this case, just because F6 contacted the runner, there could be another explanation, such as F6 initiated the contact and was intentionally trying to get an interference call because he knew he couldn't make the play. I'm not going to use pithy parenthesis to illustrate my point, however.

You weren't there, but you feel it is okay to essentially tell dacodee that he blew the call. There are instances of contact which are neither obstruction nor interference, but simply contact.

If you came out on me and started running that smack along with the parenthetical comments, you would get run, and your perfect record would then end.

(Any grammatical or spelling errors left in the quoted material are not meant to disparage the original author. I won't say the same about my own post.)

SDS,

I'm pretty sure you are misreading CoachJM's intention in this board. Unlike some of our posters, I see no evidence that he cares even a little bit about winning arguments or impressing the other readers of this board.

Note that mcrowder told the OP that his ruling was wrong, and that dacodee accepted that "My partner and I botched that one" in the third post of this thread. Dacodee also doesn't seem to have indicated offense taken at CoachJM's replies. There is general agreement that the original call may have been wrong.

I think that CoachJM wants to "win" arguments on the field, and this board is basically a research project for him. He gets to see how we talk about handling situations, where common holes in umpires' rules knowledge are, and how arrogant and insecure we can be.

Of course, it's a two way street. I'm personally impressed with his rules knowledge; he often authoritatively answers rules questions. More importantly, he gives us a view into the other side of the umpire/coach dynamics, and I've found that valuable. (I've never understood the desire to run rats off this board. I have to deal with rats on the field; I'd prefer to understand them.)

As far as I know, this is the first time he's actually suggested play-acting a situation with an umpire, and that might be fun too.

He's just part of how this board has helped me. FWIW, I don't respond to a coach on the field until I've thought about Tee (answer in five words or less), HHH (many coaches are smart after all), CoachJM (don't give the coach a bad rule interpretation to protest about). I rather wish more of the coaches I met were like him.

[dacodee]

Originally Posted by SanDiegoSteve

You made it sound different in the original post. You even said the runner was trying to avoid the fielder. It sounded as though F6 actually chased down the runner to contact him as he was passing by. The fact that you did not change the call also indicated that you were certain there was no interference. Now you are telling us something different.

Also, it would not be "accidental" contact, it would be perhaps "incidental" contact, which is different.

Thanks SDS...

Try reading the original post again... I made no reference to F6 intentionally running him down. You obviously have nothing constructive to contribute to this post. So, go do a game and report back on how perfect it went.

Really!!! If you don't have anything constructive to post, don't post. There's simply too much negativity in many of these posts.

Have a great weekend All....

DAC

[SanDiegoSteve]

Originally Posted by LilLeaguer

(Any grammatical or spelling errors left in the quoted material are not meant to disparage the original author. I won't say the same about my own post.)

SDS,

I'm pretty sure you are misreading CoachJM's intention in this board. Unlike some of our posters, I see no evidence that he cares even a little bit about winning arguments or impressing the other readers of this board.

Note that mcrowder told the OP that his ruling was wrong, and that dacodee accepted that "My partner and I botched that one" in the third post of this thread. Dacodee also doesn't seem to have indicated offense taken at CoachJM's replies. There is general agreement that the original call may have been wrong.

I think that CoachJM wants to "win" arguments on the field, and this board is basically a research project for him. He gets to see how we talk about handling situations, where common holes in umpires' rules knowledge are, and how arrogant and insecure we can be.

Of course, it's a two way street. I'm personally impressed with his rules knowledge; he often authoritatively answers rules questions. More importantly, he gives us a view into the other side of the umpire/coach dynamics, and I've found that valuable. (I've never understood the desire to run rats off this board. I have to deal with rats on the field; I'd prefer to understand them.)

As far as I know, this is the first time he's actually suggested play-acting a situation with an umpire, and that might be fun too.

He's just part of how this board has helped me. FWIW, I don't respond to a coach on the field until I've thought about Tee (answer in five words or less), HHH (many coaches are smart after all), CoachJM (don't give the coach a bad rule interpretation to protest about). I rather wish more of the coaches I met were like him.

I've been dealing with coaches for many moons now. This one has rubbed me the wrong way. Rich Ives, on the other hand, does not rub me the wrong way, and he is a rules maven too.

JM intentionally used a poster's exact bad grammar (which I know JM knows the correct grammar) in a response on a different thread. I think he believes that nobody is noticing his condescention, and I'm just doing a Robert DiNero "I'm watching you, Focker" kind of thing.

Mcrowder was saying that the coach should have been run for bringing out the rules, and that is what I thought dacodee was saying when he spoke of botching the call, not the interference, since he asked our opinion about the interference call. From the information supplied originally, it was difficult to see the play clearly, as it was ambiguous at best.

I don't find play-acting a situation with a coach to be amusing at all. And I did not say that I wanted to run JM off the board. I said he would get run if he came to me on a ballfield with the smack he was running from that post.

Also, please remember that interference is completely a judgment call, and the coach trying to turn it into a rules misinterpretation by bringing out a rule book is totally unacceptable. If the umpire said that it isn't interference for the runner to fail to avoid a fielder, then the coach can protest. If the umpire says that in his judgment, there was no interference, there can be absolutely no protest at all.

[SanDiegoSteve]

Originally Posted by dacodee

Thanks SDS...

Try reading the original post again... I made no reference to F6 intentionally running him down. You obviously have nothing constructive to contribute to this post. So, go do a game and report back on how perfect it went.

Really!!! If you don't have anything constructive to post, don't post. There's simply too much negativity in many of these posts.

Have a great weekend All....

DAC

I read your original post over and over, and it still is ambiguous. I have called many a perfect, errorless game over my long career. Who do think you are to tell me what to post? When you come even anywhere close to 3,200 games umpired, you just let me know sonny, then you can talk to me like that. Not until!

[dacodee]

Originally Posted by SanDiegoSteve

I read your original post over and over, and it still is ambiguous. I have called many a perfect, errorless game over my long career. Who do think you are to tell me what to post? When you come even anywhere close to 3,200 games umpired, you just let me know sonny, then you can talk to me like that. Not until!

I wasn't going to go there, but can't help myself. "Blah, Blah, Blah"... Enough already! I post to get constructive feedback. Not to go back and forth with a bully.

Mcrowdy responded... I blew the call... That's it! Enough said...

Someone once told me that if you know you blew it, don't blow it again. Well SDS, you blew, don't blow again.

Peace!

DAC

[SanDiegoSteve]

Originally Posted by dacodee

I wasn't going to go there, but can't help myself. "Blah, Blah, Blah"... Enough already! I post to get constructive feedback. Not to go back and forth with a bully.

Mcrowdy responded... I blew the call... That's it! Enough said...

Someone once told me that if you know you blew it, don't blow it again. Well SDS, you blew, don't blow again.

Peace!

DAC

Hey, look here....you presumed to tell me what to post. Don't try to spin this into me saying something wrong. I was defending your call, based on your original post. You asked for opinions, and I gave mine. I don't give a rat's a$$ what you post for. I don't owe you any constructive feedback. What are you, some kind of pinko commie? Who made you Lord of the Posts? A bully? I'm no bully, but I don't make posts without putting some thought into them, and I don't appreciate being told what I can and cannot post. If you don't like the comments posted in your little thread, then delete it, okay?

Another thing, I never said that you made a reference to F6 running the runner down, I said that it "sounded as though F6 actually chased down the runner....." Please stop misquoting me.

[dacodee]

Originally Posted by SanDiegoSteve

Hey, look here....you presumed to tell me what to post. Don't try to spin this into me saying something wrong. I was defending your call, based on your original post. You asked for opinions, and I gave mine. I don't give a rat's a$$ what you post for. I don't owe you any constructive feedback. What are you, some kind of pinko commie? Who made you Lord of the Posts? A bully? I'm no bully, but I don't make posts without putting some thought into them, and I don't appreciate being told what I can and cannot post. If you don't like the comments posted in your little thread, then delete it, okay?

Another thing, I never said that you made a reference to F6 running the runner down, I said that it "sounded as though F6 actually chased down the runner....." Please stop misquoting me.

SDS,

I'd love to continue this conversation, but I've got my 3,201 game to call.

Have a great weekend and don't hurt anybody...

Peace!

DAC