Assignor Nightmares

[His High Holiness]

All,

Unfortunately, I do not have any further info on this incident, but in looking through my assignor archives, I found a similar incident involving one of our umpires.

In the days before formal FED appeals when umpires called runners out for missing bases without any appeal, one of our umpires, who had only worked FED ball, was doing a game under pro rules. After a play ended, while the pitcher was mounting the rubber with no apparant intention to appeal, the umpire called the runner out for missing a base. The offense was furious, the defense then initiated the proper appeal, and the runner was called out.

The only difference between the case that we are debating here and this case is that in the PA announcer probably acted with malice and the umpire new to pro rules acted out of ignorance. Regardless, the defense learned of the missed base outside the intent of the rules.

The only proper ruling in both cases is to call the runner out. Anything else is making up rules. I have read the whole thread and I am appalled at the apparant willingness of some umpires to play God and try to make things "fair." Our job is to enforce the rules. League officials are allowed to make things fair if they want. But for umpires, the only correct course of action is eject the announcer, call R2 out, and move on.

On the other hand, league presidents (e.g., the AL president who overuled the umpires in the famous pine tar incident involving George Brett) have more leeway. It would be entirely appropriate for a league president to meet out punishment by awarding a victory to the visiting team for the outrageous conduct of the home team PA announcer. It is entirely innappropriate for an umpire to attempt to do the same thing.

Look at the NCAA. The governing boards regularly take away victories from teams that are found to have illegal players, recruiting violations, etc. On field officials never do that, however.

Peter