...many of them apparently frequent this forum :D

Defense's coach comes out while offense is still running the bases? He gets a quick stop sign, perhaps even a verbal stop sign if he doesn't hear me. He walks through that, he won't get charged a conference, but he will get to watch the rest of the game through binoculars.

PWL, if the catcher THEN talks with the pitcher I have a visit. Absent that, I don't have a chargable conference.

Under FED Rules, this is a defensive charged conference even if the catcher does not talk F1. Remember that FED does not have a "trip to the mound" rule but rather a Defensive conference rule. If the manager requests and is granted time, and then goes to the outfield to talk to his center fielder, this is a defensive conference.

FED Rule 3-4-3: ...If the conference was in foul territory, the conference concludes when the coach or non-playing representative initially starts to return to the dugout/bench area.

True, in FED play, that is a conference. I must have missed the FED part of the discussion, I guess it was further up in the thread.

Interesting takes on the pitcher/coach conference between innings. I discussed this with an umpire supervisor earlier this season and was advised to warn a coach that he could be charged a conference if he did it again in the future as most would not even consider this a trip.

The basis was that 1) by having the discussion, it took away from the time the pitcher had to throw his 5 or 8 warm-up pitches - thus delaying the start of the inning unless you subsequently reduced the number of warm-up pitches. And 2) it also was to be considered a conference because the next half inning officially starts as soon as the last out is recorded in the previous half inning.

This becomes a real issue if you are playing games under a time limit.

Unless the pitcher was out running the basepaths, the coach could have given his advice in the dugout (I do allow the 3rd base coach to walk across the diamond and give a brief word of encouragement or whatever as he passes the pitcher though).

Sounds like many of you disagree -

I don't think which set of rules was ever specified, but I do know that PWL usually cites FED rules, so I figured it out by that.

Dammit ... you guys are making me defend PWL. I hate you.

PWL SPECIFICALLY stated in his very first post here, that the sitch he described was in a FED game.

Gawd. That's like finding out your Sunday-school teacher is a pimp.


;)

Quick, go read a few pages out of the JEA. It'll help get that taste out of your mouth.

Bringing the Rule Book onto the field
 

I know this is off the topic of this thread, but I couldn't resist.

During a 10 year old tournament game when the batter was hit by a pitch that bounced in front of him the PU did not award him first base, saying the ball was dead when it hit the ground. No amount of logic based replies worked. In trotting out the rule book, he wouldn't even give ground when cited with 6.08(b). He did, however, change his ruling when shown 2.00 definition of a "BALL", even though this didn't address the exact situation, but rather a pitch that strikes the ground and moves through the strike zone. He said he needed to see the book explicitly state that a ball that hits the ground and then the batter meant the batter got first base.

During the same game, several times his pitch call could be heard before the "ping" of the bat hitting the ball. Now, I understand it's neither wise nor helpful to pull out the rule book with an experienced umpire at an upper level game, but it was clearly necessary to avoid a protest in this situation. BTW, this guy - who was good natured about his mistake - claimed that he almost never did LL games, but rather mostly did Junior College. Go figure.

Thanks,

Dennis

You are right. I was too lazy to go back one page and find his original post.

I sincerely doubt the truth of this umpire ever working anything above Little League, if he doesn't know the rules, and has that bad of timing on pitches.

When he said the rules weren't explicit in awarding him first, you could have countered that if the rules didn't state that the ball was dead when it hit the ground first, how can he assume that the ball was dead before hitting the batter? His logic made no sense.

Like I said, appealing to him with logic was something he didn't find appealing. I agree his claim to work higher levels was doubtful. The tournament director later told me that the ump's initial ruling was in line with their local LL's regular season practice, and that since they now realize it's wrong, they'll change it for next year.

It's also doubtful that spending any (more) time on this could possibly be worthwhile. Sorry to bring it up in the first place.

Thanks.