Glad I Was Not There
 

I got this second hand from my nephew who is a varsity player in a state that uses FED rules. Batter hits a home run. Before he touches home plate, a teammate reaches out and gives him a "high five". The umpire calls the batter out and takes the run off the board. I know that this is not correct, but how should a coach handle this if his player is called out for such a thing? Our state has protest procedures where the protesting coach has ten minutes to find in the rulebook where the umpire has misapplied a rule. I don't know how you can prove to someone who believes a non-existent rule when there is nothing specifically in the rulebook that says he is incorrect. I know that some will tell me to have him show me where he is correct, but that is not the way it works. He does not have to prove anything. The coach has to prove that he is wrong.

How does this joker get away with making uninformed calls like this?

How does your state get away with such an asinine procedure? Protests are not supposed to be rushed like that. How silly!

I would like to grab umpires that make that kind of call and just slap the living sh*t out of them!

"I would like to grab umpires that make that kind of call and just slap the living sh*t out of them!"

I am glad to hear another umpire say that. At least it is not just coaches who feel like this.

As I posted in another thread, it is the person who claims that a violation has occurred and seeks to impose a penalty that owes an explanation and rules citation. He needs to state which rule has been violated.

And the protest procedure unfairly burdens the coach. Suppose an umpire calls out a runner who had hit a HR because he touched 3B with his left foot instead of his right. Nothing in the rulebook is going to back up a protesting coach, but obviously such an umpire would be incorrect.

The coach looks up the rule for interference and presents that to the ruling body accompanied by the statement that there is no other reference to the ruling the #%&@*%! umpire made.

The rulebook will cite that each base must be touched in order and it will not state any requirement as to which foot must touch, thus it will back up the protesting coach.

Yeah but...
 

As I said before, if you have an umpire who is arrogant enough to make the call, he will most likely be one of those type of guys who says, "It's in there somewhere. The batter is out."

I agree, the umpire that made that call was related to a certain part of a horse .

This is kind of like when I first started and many would say, "I don't know what he did but, it was definitely a Balk?

If you can't explain your ruling with similar words from the rulebook, then you probably don't understand enough to make such a ruling.

Tem minutes to look up a rule? Hell, most coaches couldn't find their rulebook in ten minutes

If the ruling body has an accumulative IQ of above 90, it shouldn't matter what the umpire says if the coach presents what is in the rule book. There is enough there to settle the issue,

Additionally, any umpire who says "It's in there somewhere" is going to look even more like a horse's arse than he did when he made the call. Have some faith in your system and know the rules.

I have taken to replying "what did he do?" when a team complains incorrectly that a pitcher has balked. It shuts them up pretty quickly when they don't have an answer.

You have to know the individual who made the call. I do, and have worked with him several times. He can be very good, and he can be an absolute horses ***. As in this case, and no, I am in no way defending him here, he is plan and simply WRONG. I'm just damn glad I wasn't on the field with him. He is also the infamous ejecting the announcer of ESPN fame while working in the GBL. From what I was told he was using rule 3-2-3 I believe, some nonsense like that. Claiming interference. It basically comes down to an unbelievable ego, with the I can make the big call mentality. Clearly he has forgotten the mantra, rule with the book not by the book. Lets not forget, it was a dead ball during the high five. Terrible, just terrible call.:(

Last year, didn't an umpire cost an NCAA women's softball team a game on the same (wrong) call?

Does Fed still have the rule that you throw the player out if he has chewing gum wadded in his cheek?

The word 'cheek' does not appear in the 2009 Baseball Rule Book. :eek:

In some states I am familiar with, thinking the issue out
 

Okay, let's play with this a little. For example, this game is a Regional final, and the winner goes on in the tournament...

1. Manager comes out and disagrees with this call. This is not a judgment call, it is a rules error.
2. Umpire gives him some trash to justify his call.

You are the manager, what do you do? Your options are:

1. Suck it up, lose the game, and use it as a teachable moment to teach players the hard lessons about life not being fair, and how you have to be able to overcome such trouble in life and you have to be strong and deal with it with class. But, now your season is at an end, your Seniors are done, and your school may not get back to this level again. ...

2. Continue to disagree in a manner that is not offensive, but eventually get ejected, and in some states loses multiple games to a suspension, pay a 3 figure fine, and take a mandated on-line coaching course or be suspended by the state organization. Meanwhile umpire X gets off more or less scott free, though if the state association or an assigner hears about this something might get done.

My point: I have a hard time with states fining coaches for getting ejected unless the behavior is such that they are a definite bad example of bad sportsmanship. If I was coach X, and knew this was an incorrect call, then I would probably push the discussion far enough I would get ejected.

Education and sportsmanship are a high priority in HS athletics, nobody doubts that. But winning matters too, doesn't it? Where is the line here: Senior player X who hit the HR spent years getting to this point, and probably will not play college BB, so this is it for him. Is winning of such little importance that it fighting this point, even hotly, or even if it costs and ejection is the worse option?

To me, it seems that in some places, the importance of winning is being devalued in athletics. Heaven knows there is too much emphasis on wining in some places where out and out cheating is going on. But I think that in too many places, winning does not matter enough, and the lines between winning and other values in sports are being redrawn in an unhealthy way.

Opinions?

What would you do in this case? What is the solution for the manager, who has a lot riding on this game?

here is that story... the Umpire did mess up the rule... but its all good..

YouTube - Softball teammates carry opponent around the base

That isn't the case greymule was referring to. Greymule, yes something like that did happen last season. Essentially, a coach (who knew the actual rule) argued that the player should be called out for the high five and the umpires did call her out (instead of issuing the appropriate warning).

Wrong.

The coach had the rule wrong and convinced the umpire to rule in her favor. The coach of the offense did not know enough to have the rule correctly applied.

All erred. The runner should not have been called out.

I wrote that poorly. I did not intend to say that the coach knew the rule and had the umpires apply it correctly, which I now see is how I wrote my original post.

The coach argued the runner should've been called out (which is incorrect) and the umpires did call the runner out (incorrectly). The coach did admit she knew that wasn't correct but she argued it anyways.

Then there was the umpire in NC who tossed a number of players, resulting in forfeit, for coming out of the dugout after a HR to congratulate the teammate, without helmets on, after game winning HR. I don't remember the exact details but believe it was two rival teams and the underdog would have won, but the ruling was overturned and they were forced to play again with underdog losing big.

Seems to me that all coaches who complain ARE SURE that they are correct and the umpire is wrong(minus the 1/10 of 1% who want to get tossed to motivate the team).
How does "pushing the discussion far enough I would get ejected" in any way help you convince the umpire to change his call? Thats just self serving to make yourself feel better.

Bad behavior is bad behavior and should be punished, whether its the 7th of a championship game or the 1st season game of a team that has no chance of even going .500(though Id give the championship game coach a LITTLE more rope, depending).

True, umpire mistakes happen, but rarely, if ever, do they make the only difference in a win/loss.
Did every batter go 3 for 4? No errors?, F1 didnt have a BB or HBP? Coach didnt send a runner who was thrown out? "But wait, that Blue, who we dont know, made a mistake, so the loss is his fault!!"--classic coachspeak.

The umpire in the OP was very wrong, but to answer the Q "what does a coach do when he he has alot riding on the game?"-- Realize that you cant control everything, and remember that 10 yrs from now- those players wont remember that game so much as they will recall your actions as an adult- to laugh at, or emulate as a good example...

The umpires on this forum, with the possible exception of YOU, actually do umpire real baseball games.

Posing as an umpire on an online umpiring forum to try to impress actual umpires with what a bad@ss you are.

Where does that stand on the top-ten-signs-you're-a-loser list?