Jewelry
 

I am puzzled as to why so many umpires allow the wearing of jewelry within amateur sporting events. It seems like travel ball is really bad with the players wanting to wear multiple rope necklaces and some even wearing chains. I myself give a friendly reminder at the plate meeting to remove all jewelry, then during the game if I see any I have it removed immediately. Most of the umpires though could care less about what the players wear and it bothers me that they allow them to play wearing all this darn jewelry. Also, when you ask them to remove their jewelry you get a dumbfounded look from the player and coach due to the fact that most umpires have never told them to remove it before.

Take a look at this picture from a regional high school game and you can clearly see multiple jewelry items being worn.

http://d1csi9vjsd9t3h.cloudfront.net...d6fe7988c5.jpg

Why do umpires willingly ignore this safety rule?

I ignore it because, with the exception of HS and LL, there *is* no such rule in games I work.

Or maybe they couldn't care less

Can you quote this rule (and ruleset)?

The post is about High School Ball which except in 2 States is NHFS.

NHFS

1-5-12 Jewelry shall not be worn (See 3-3-1 d) except for religious or
medical medals. A religious medal must be taped and worn under the uniform. A medical alert must be taped and may be visible.

3-3-1d
ART. 1... A coach, player, substitute, attendant or other bench personnel shall not:
d. wear jewelry (players participating in the game) or wear bandannas;

PENALTY: At the end of playing action, the umpire shall issue a warning to the coach of the team involved and the next offender on that team shall be ejected, except for (f), where the coach shall be ejected. In (b), it is also obstruction (8-3-2)

It depends what rule set we are working under in the summer. Legion uses major league rules with some variations. VFW uses high school rules. Iowa high school uses federation rules. So as I see it, I don't care what they wear for jewelry in legion but do care in VFW and high school games.

OK, I now see the link at the bottom is high school.. I responded after reading the beginning:
I didn't get "high school" out of "travel ball". I see the confusion now.

Yeah, it took a couple of reads for me, too. :D

I am still trying to figure it out. He is first talking about travel ball, not NFHS rules. All travel ball I've ever seen was OBR based, and the kids get all blinged out, with no rule preventing it. Travel ball always cracks me up how everybody thinks they are like some elite group of players, coaches, and managers, as if they are on the Junior Professional circuit or something.

I hate working travel ball!!

http://finickypenguin.files.wordpres...8/06/mr-t1.jpg

Sorry for the confusion guys haha.

The picture is within a high school game using FED rules obviously. I posted it as the player is clearly wearing two necklaces and also has a band on. There is no way that the umpires could have missed this, so why are they willingly allowing the players to wear it?

My rant into travel ball comes from the fact that I have yet to do a game within USSSA where there was not one kid with his neck hanging over from all the necklaces he is wearing.

Most of the travel ball I do uses HS rules, and so must have no jewelry. There have been multiple occasions where I have required one person to remove jewelry, and then within a few seconds, the 1/2 the rest of the team removes some too!

Just curious - what org is the umbrella for your travel ball?

The only one I've run across that uses FED is AAU.

Rich,
The tournaments run by USA Baseball, Perfect Game, CABA, and other smaller entities like the Battle in the South all use NFHS as the basis for their rules.

USSSA and Nations baseball use OBR based rules with some of the NFHS safety rules.

Roughly speaking, at about age 14 (sometimes less) travel ball organizations which have players that will end up playing college ball pretty much stop playing in USSSA or Nations and play instead tournaments that use NFHS rules.

I do a ton of Gameday USA tourney's, they all use FED rules. I do a bunch of other travel ball, not even sure who it is (nor do I really care), but I'm betting 70-80% of the non-men's leagues I do are FED here in the Chicago Suburbs.

(And I'm not a big fan of the men's leagues most of the time, just the larger paychecks!)