Interference or Not???

[UmpJM]

Originally Posted by SanDiegoSteve

JM:

...

But thank you for explaining it from a totally biased coach's standpoint. Please let the umpires do this in the future. It is very easy to sit in the dugout and flaunt your knowledge of the rules, and a very different case to actually have to apply these rules in stressful situations. That requires an umpire.

S.D. Steve,

Ummm, I could be mistaken, but I believe that Tim (BigUmp56) asked me to explain this from a coach's perspective (see post #8 on this thread). I was merely trying to comply with the umpire's instruction.

While I would certainly concur that a coach should NOT bring his rulebook onto the field (which I believe I said in my earlier post), it may not be the naive coach's intent to "show up the umpire" were he to do so.

Take Xtopher_66's hypothetical posed in his question to Tim where an umpire has made a gross rule misapplication as an example (I know, would probably never happen in the the "real world"). He asks if it would be OK to show the umpire the rule in the rulebook. It doesn't sound to me like his intent is to "show up" the umpire; rather, it seems to me he is trying to "help" the umpire arrive at the correct ruling.

Tim said it would be OK to "ask" the umpire if they could look it up together. I implicitly concurred with him and then went on to say that it would be a rare occasion when it would even be useful to look in the rulebook and suggested what I believe to be a proper procedure for appealing to an umpire to correct his call should the coach believe the umpire misapplied the rules in making his initial call.

I also fully concur that it is an order of magnitude more difficult to actually apply the rules while umpiring a game than it is to (slightly different analogy) sit in front of a computer, with all kinds of reference materials handy, and discuss how those rules might be properly applied in an abstract, theoretical way.

However, if you want to talk about stressful, try convincing an umpire that he has just made an incorrect call in a game when:

1. He can eject you, pretty much for any reason he feels appropriate.

2. His version of what actually happened is the only one that matters.

3. He is already predisposed to believe his knowledge of the rules is vastly superior to your own (usually, but not always, correctly so).

4. In many cases, he is predisposed to believe that you have the moral character and integrity of a rodent.

It's not only stressful, it's quite difficult to accomplish.

JM