mlb umpires blow a call?

[bobbybanaduck]

the "complete possession" portion of that interpretation is misleading and poorly worded. a better wording woud include something about the impetus of the ball similar to the pitched ball going out of play. i did not see it live, and am only working on the video clip you linked to. it looks like Laz, the 1BU, signals ground rule double by holding up 2 fingers. if both runs were allowed to score, which they did in this case, then i bet there was a conference that changed the ground rule double call to a time of deflection award. basically, what the interp you cited is trying to say is that if a ball is hit down the line and it hits off the players glove and immediately deflects into the stands, it will be penalized as a time of pitch award. in this case, it appears that because the ball was juggled/bobbled so many times they changed it to a time of deflection award because the ball did not immediately go out of play due to the original deflection.

what is confusing me about it is how the b/r ended up at 2B. if they ruled it a ground rule double, then only 1 run should have scored, and the answer to the title of this thread would be, "looks like it." if they didn't rule it a g/r double, then they must have judged that R1 was past 2B at the time of deflection and the b/r was not past 1B at the time of deflection, which would mean score, score, second. unfortunately i do not know any of the guys on the crew well enough to ask them about it, so we will have to continue to speculate.

edited because the first draft was hard to read and i have more time now to work on it.

[umpjayfire]

Bobby
I understand what you are saying and poorly worded is one thing but... that is HUGE leap from 'complete possession' to bobbling it out of play after a certain amount of time and bobbles....I know you were a professional umpire and will not argue with how you/they interpret what happened but I have 2 questions for you ...
1) if 'you/they' ruled only 1 run scores and R1 to 3rd and B/R to 2nd would you be reprimanded for that ruling?
2)what would you have ruled?

[umpjayfire]

it seems, if you are correct, that this would be easy to change....meaning you could just make the ruling identical to the 'pitched ball' ruling where if a pitched ball gets by the catcher, would not have gone out of play, and the catcher kicks it out of play it is then 2 bases from time of deflection....


These manuals are like interpreting the ancient tablets of Egypt sometimes...
pain in the butt

[bobbybanaduck]

Originally Posted by umpjayfire

Bobby
I understand what you are saying and poorly worded is one thing but... that is HUGE leap from 'complete possession' to bobbling it out of play after a certain amount of time and bobbles....I know you were a professional umpire and will not argue with how you/they interpret what happened but I have 2 questions for you ...
1) if 'you/they' ruled only 1 run scores and R1 to 3rd and B/R to 2nd would you be reprimanded for that ruling?
2)what would you have ruled?

it depends on how they judged the play. this is total speculation, but i think if a supervisor asked them what happened and they said that a fair fly ball was deflected out of play...then they would have been incorrect in their placement of runners and it should have been score, 3B, 2B. if they said that if the first deflection had fallen to the ground then there wouldn't have been any issue and the second deflection caused it to go out of play, then i think they are right in awarding it as time of deflection. i don't know if that answered your question or not.

i don't know what i would have ruled at the time it happened. seeing it now i would have the same thing as they had providing that the unwritten interpretation of the time of deflection rule is allowable.

[umpjayfire]

Bobby
I appreciate the reply and understand it and intuitively it makes sense....I will rule this way from now on but I sure wish I didn't have to rely on an unwritten interpretation when there is a written one that basically contradicts it...just doesnt seem that tidy....oh well...