Appeal/Missed call
 

I have a situation that I'm wondering if my partner and I handled correctly. 18+ league where the players player/manager swear they play "strictly OBR," but then have 10 guys bat, and allow courtesy runners, so maybe a few variations.

Batter hits a ball that I see hit off his foot and go up the 3rd base line a few feet. PU does not call a foul, catcher throws to 1B, BR called out. This whole time the batter keeps yelling it was off his foot. I guess my partner said, "I'm sorry, I didn't see it." The batter asks a few times to get help, my partner then asks me for help. I tell him it was off his foot, becomes a foul ball.

Now the defense is upset, claims the call can not be changed because the BR was already called out, no way to change that ruling.

Any thoughts, other than if the PU had called foul right away, life would have been easier!

treydawg,

If you are the BU and clearly see the batted ball hit the batter and your PU partner does not see/call it, go ahead and call "TIME!" without being asked.

JM

You, too, could have made life easier by coming in hard with a foul call.

Around here, PU's won't go for help on that because they know if their partner had seen the ball hit the batter, they'd have called it.

Ok, I am still quite new to the 2 man mechanics. (3 games on the bases is all.) I have done quite a lot of single man games, and feel comfortable there. I didn't realize that it is something I should be doing, as the mechanics say the ball/strike/foul is a PU thing. Probably should have, and in hind sight it would have been a better decision!

But along those same lines, if help IS asked for, for whatever reason, it is acceptable to get the correct call (though maybe not favorable with one team or the other...)?

Even though you didn't get it right at first, you should still get it right. Tell the defense that "it was late, but we got it right."

I'm surprised that you would be doing that level with only 3 games experience.

This is a more of a fun league, plus the association contacted me to join their group.

Seems like the bid for, and got a ton of contracts, more than they have umpires! We'll see how the first few games go, I feel I mostly understand what I should do, but then don't always implement it correctly. It's sort of the, duh, I probably should have done that... I keep studying, learning, and trying to get better each and every game.

No. He should have come in hard with a "TIME!" call. Let the PU decide if the runner was out of the box or not.

We used to do that, but recently the conference has suggested that if the PU knew if he was hit in fair of foul, he would have known to make the call. We call what we see, foul, if foul, time, if fair.

That's not 100% the case. If the batter hits the ball, then comes out of the box, where he's hit by the batted ball, the PU may be screened from seeing him getting hit. If BU calls time, the PU can determine the batter's position at that time (or determine where he was when initially hit by the ball).

Doubtful, in our experience, with accuracy. If he didn't see it, he didn't see it and reconstructing it less accurate that going with what the BU has.

Pregame: "if you see a batted ball off a player and I don't call it, you call it if you see it". If a coach asks for help I always discuss with partner because I expect that if he had seen it we would not be having this discussion. If he says he saw it but did not call it then we make it right and postgame discuss on this, and hopefully this don't happen again.

So as the BU, you would be comfortable calling a BR out for making contact with a batted ball near the plate?

In some cases, yes.

If I were 100% on it, sure. If I weren't 100%, it was foul.

I'd feel more comfortable calling it seeing it as BU than calling it and not seeing it as PU.

This. We cover this in every pre-game. My partner and I last night came up twice with "FOUL" calls, simply because I'm deliberately deliberate in my calls. I had both, but he was on the job. I certainly appreciated it. As for calling a batter out as a base umpire, it would have to be pretty darned obvious.

Cheers.