Should there be protests

[greymule]

True. For every thousand coaches who say they're protesting, how many protests actually make their way through the system?

I've had two protests, both in SP softball. One involved what a team thought I should have called a crash at home plate. It was more on the basis of "all crashes are illegal," not on knowledge of the rule. It was denied.

The other was a real joke. Every team in the league had been using a certain model bat all year. Then, in a playoff game, after a home run, the defense called attention to that bat as being illegal. (The fact that their own team had been using it during the same game didn't deter them.) The manager of the team that hit the home run claimed that both teams had been using it all year, that the other team had been using it in that very game, and that the league commissioner had assured him the bat was legal. So I allowed the HR, but warned the offense that if the bat turned out not to be legal, they would lose the protest and the game would have to be continued where it left off. (The bat was ASA legal, but it was one of those "does this qualify as a double-wall bat?" issues.)

Oddly, that protest was upheld, and the game was scheduled to be continued from that point the next day. However, the offended team didn't show up.