What is your philosophy

[gsf23]

Well, in the first situation I don't see where there should be a philosophy involved, according to the post you could clearly see that the runner was safe, no reason to call on out on that play.

The second situation is the one that sucks. As an ump I personally feel that swipe tags are one of the harder calls to make because the are generally going to be a bang bang plays, probably with the runner sliding and dirt flying. In these situations, unless I see something that says otherwise, like your frist situation, I'm calling the out.

Now in your situation, you said that the fielder was on the outfield side of the bag. Now if I was the ump, after seeing the ball caught and the tag trying to be applied, the next thing I would look at is where is this runner sliding? If they are going to the middle or outfield side of the bag, I would probably ring em up, but if they made a good slide to the inside part of the bag, then I might have a safe call. Was the throw into second high or right on the bag? Again, a throw right on the bag would probably get the out call while a high throw may cause me to go with a safe call.

Now again, this is all based on the fact that because of the dirt, you can't clearly see a tag being applied. If you can see the play, like situation one, then you call what you see. Otherwise, don't rush your call, analyze what you did see and then go with your gut.

I don't rely to heavily on player reaction. The defense is always going to think they got an out and the offense is always going to think they are safe. Sometimes though, if the player does react like your situation 2, you can get away with calling like they want it.

Just my opinion, let the criticizing begin!

[Edited by gsf23 on May 13th, 2003 at 02:36 PM]