Ignore or Address?

[Manny A]

Originally Posted by jicecone

What are you going to address? Are you 100% sure he was talking to the pitcher. He could have been telling his runner to "step off" the bag.

Seriously? The pitcher is in the set, and you think one of the runners needs to be told to step off the bag? The third base coach yelled, "Step off! He's going!" That doesn't sound like an instruction to a runner to take a lead.

I personally don't think there's any gray area here. There's no other reason a third base coach would say this but to cause a balk. Heck, the example used in the rule of calling Time is less definitive in my mind; there could easily be a very legitimate reason for a base coach to yell Time, such as thinking there's a loose ball on the field. But "Step off! He's going!" leaves no wiggle room.

So I would argue that it needs to be addressed, but not necessarily with a lot of fanfare. Telling the coach between innings to knock off that crap should suffice.

[MD Longhorn]

Odd.

OK, fine, I'll play along. Let's assume he WAS trying to draw a balk, and walk through it. What's the penalty?

[Manny A]

Well, Fed rule 3-3-1o addresses this, and calls for an immediate ejection in the Penalty section. Not sure I would go to that extreme, but that's what's in the book. As I mentioned above, a warning prior to the ejection should handle it.

[Findingtime]

You could alway restrict him to the bench. I'm sure that would send a very quick message. It is a lot better than an ejection.

[johnnyg08]

Originally Posted by Findingtime

You could alway restrict him to the bench. I'm sure that would send a very quick message. It is a lot better than an ejection.

Or you could follow the rules and dump him.