Glad I Was Not There

[harmbu]

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?

[SanDiegoSteve]

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!

[harmbu]

"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.

[mbyron]

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.

[MrUmpire]

Originally Posted by mbyron

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 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.

[harmbu]

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."

[jicecone]

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

[MrUmpire]

Originally Posted by harmbu

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.

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.