Throwing the Bat - LL
 

Got pressed into service last night for LL to help out a friend. I probably screwed up here and was too lenient... but:

What are the rules in LL surrounding a player throwing a bat. Can you call outs? Can you eject? Is there a specific number of warnings for this, and is it by player or by team?

I'm referring to the careless toss of the bat after contact - flinging it either to the backstop or into the catcher (who had no play on the ball).

You cannot call some one out for throwing a bat. PERIOD. It is protestable and the protesting team should win. DON"T DO IT; it only perpetuates the myth.

Warn the player, if they do it again, Eject. At the LL ages don't make a big deal about the ejection. Just tell the manager the player is removed from the game. At this age I would (my opinion) keep the warnings to individual players.

I await further replies... but if all that is accurate, I didn't do anything incorrectly, except perhaps the final warning...

The problem arose when, after 1 such throw I asked the coach to remind his player to be less careless with the bat. When the very next batter plunked the catcher with a bat, I went to the head coach in earshot of the dugout and told him, "Coach, that's the 2nd batter in a row that's thrown a bat. Please remind them not to do that." He did so...

Very next batter threw one to the fence. When the play ended, I went over, stood at the bat, got coach's attention so that he saw where it landed. He was pretty vocal in admonishing his team at that point.

But ... the very NEXT batter did it as well. 4 in a row. After the play ended, I told the coach, loud enough for the dugout to hear - coach, next flung bat is ejected. Period. Someone's going to get hurt.

Miraculously, that somehow fixed the problem.

Our guidance from Williamsport is warn, and eject.

Now the problem is that an ejection carries with it a one game suspension, and most level headed folks think the suspension is pretty harsh for a non-intentional act. What most do is warn the individual, then tell the coach to pull him from the lineup.

But four in a row it pretty odd(and spooky), and I think your proclamation was warrented. Hell, it worked, didn't it?

What if this doesn't match minimum-play rules? Let's say VT's lead-off hitter throws the bat on the first at-bat. Team bats around and he does it again. You have coach pull him from the lineup.

VT wins, but HC protests (or whatever you do) that minimum-play wasn't completed on VT's lead-off.

It's the same as a kid coming out of the game for an injury. No penalty for missing MPR.

You're telling a coach to pull a kid from his lineup, but it's not considered an ejection? Odd.

If your guidance is warn then eject, what are people doing requesting the player be pulled from the lineup? If the player was warned, then it is an ejection - plain and simple. Why are people complicating this simple procedure?

Warn then eject!

Because it's Little League. Almost as bad as Fed.

Ejection is harsh for a nonvoluntary act, as it carries the one game suspension.

"Coach, number seven is done for the day. You pull him, or I eject him. Your choice".

And if a coach pulls him, and tries to reenter him later in the game, eject the coach.

It's pretty simple. No need to go Ozzy on the little kids.

You're ejecting the coach for what exactly, a legal substitution? If you don't want the player to continue to participate in that game, eject him. Otherwise don't. But you have no authority to demand a substitution of a player who has not been ejected.

Honestly? I don't have the authority to eject a coach for unsportsmanlike conduct? I give him a chance to save a player from an ejection, and he ignores it (not that it's ever happened to me).

Yeah, he'd go for UC. And we'll see what his replacement wants to do.

The point is it's not unsporting conduct. You, as umpire, have tried to circumvent the rules and then when it doesn't work you compound your error by ejecting the coach for no reason.

If I was his replacement, what I would do is file a protest and lodge a formal complaint over your conduct. Oh yeah, and inform you of the substitution I'm about to make.

Seems to me you're inventing your own rules. You tell him to choose between ejecting the kid (which is what the rule says, apparently) and putting him on the bench. But then you have an unspoken caveat that the kid has to stay out or you'll judge it USC on the coach? Why can't he do that? Kid's not ejected and has a reentry left.

Seems LL has put on paper what they want the penalty to be - if they wanted a less harsh penalty than sitting out the rest of the game and the next one, they'd have written it that way.

This sounds like a football referee not calling certain penalties simply because he personally feels the penalty is too harsh - nevermind that this is what the rulesmakers put there.

Easy now, fellas. WP is in agreement with the procedure of benching the kid, instead of the EJ. There's just no current mechanism for it.

So what's the beef with dumping the manager who tries to roll you? Would it be better to just eject the player instead, which in most people's opinion, is way too harsh? So the umpire is trying to be nice, and keep the kid from having to stay home for the next game, and the manager tries to take advantage of it? Well gents, that's pretty unsportsmanlike.

If the next guy wants to play that game, I guess that kid wasn't actually sick/injured/benched after all. He was ejected.

Next.

And not that it's ever come to that. I've only had it come up a couple of times over the years. The managers were appriciative of having that option, and thanked me. Nobody in their right mind wants to eject a little kid over this, 'cause that's who does this sort of stuff. It's not HS kids, or other teenagers. It's 9 year olds. Ejecting an 9 year old for stuff like this will sour his baseball experience, and that of his folks. No need for it.