How Would You Handle This as U1?
 

District championship game today - I was assigned to work as U1, with one of the area association "trainers" as U2.

Late in the game he's in C with runners at 2nd and 3rd. The batting team are the visitors and up 9-1 in the top of the 5th inning - so these two runs are crucial. The defense decides to give the next batter an intentional walk. First pitch comes in no problem: ball one. The next pitch is where the "fun" begins. F1 never even comes close to bringing her hands together. I call "illegal pitch" as she's delivering - giving the delayed dead ball signal. The pitch ends up right down the middle and the batter crushes the ball between two outfielders. It rolls all the way to the fence.

As the fielders are chasing down the ball and the runners all getting as much as they can, my U2 is running into the infield with his hands up yelling "wait, wait, that's an Illegal pitch, illegal pitch, Stop, Stop!!" The coach in the box at third is yelling back at him that it's a delayed dead ball and telling his players to keep running. The U2 yells back, "it's dead!"

So, when all the dust cleared and the play ended, the BR ended up on third and the two other runners crossed the plate. After then telling the coach to "zip his lip" he came to me to ask what I had.

Besides deciding to never attend a training session from that "trainer", what would you do with the runners? I'll wait for a few responses before I tell you how this all worked out.

Place them where you judge they would have reached if not for the umpires improper call.

I have to agree with this. The ball is dead as soon as your BU says "it's dead", so at that point we have an incorrect call from the B/U, which has put the offensive team in jeopardy. We need to use judgment to put the runners where they would have made it to, absent the ball being incorrectly ruled dead.

I assume you told him an idiot for a partner :)

I'm with everyone else, place the runners where you believe they would have ended up had your partner not screwed up the call.

^^^ Yup.

I have nothing to add except a +1 to the previous posts. Award bases as appropriate, and politely review the rule + effect with your "trainer" partner.

That's exactly what I did. Despite the violent screaming from the crowd, I told both coaches that I had no doubt that the BR would have reached 3rd anyway. I scored both runs and left the BR on 3rd.

Much later in the day, the U2 came to me to ask why I had called an illegal pitch, but never said anything about his boneheaded screw-up.

Please tell me they did not bring this "trainer" from downstate.

Actually just the opposite. He's from "up north".

Certainly doesn't give you much faith in the system that selects "trainers" for a sport. You did well to keep your cool and fix things after a nightmarish incident.That's something no "trainer" can teach a sport's official.

Obviously we all agree that this is the case the umpire jeopardy rule was written for. :rolleyes:

Now, there is no "C" position in 3 ump mechanics and I'm pretty sure not on 4 ump either. Please clarify.

Did the coach complain or ... about the way he was talked to?

Michigan uses two umpires only from the districts through at least the regionals, if not all the way through the finals.

I think the confusion lies with the terms he used. Often times in a two umpire system the U1 is the PU and U2 is the base umpire. Given the description I suspect this was the alignment.

There isn't much to the idea of "trainers" in Michigan. In fact, to be honest, it can be a joke as to who is allowed to become an official in Michigan for most sports. Send in your money, take a test about the MHSAA policies, and get your patch and registration equipment. This applies to all sports except football and basketball. For those sports only, you have to pass an officials exam in the sport as well. All of the tests are open book.

To be selected for a post-season assignment, you must have a certain rating (and number of ratings over 3 years), plus be a member of an approved association in that sport and have reviewed the online rules meeting for that year. To work regional and QF,SF, Final games you must have passed a sport specific exam (open book).

It doesn't take much to become an official up here. Sadly, in many cases, post-season assignments on not how good an official you are, but who you know. For districts, the individual district hosts get to choose the officials from a list of approved officials. Sometimes, if a district host is late to the party so to speak, you get what's left.

As for becoming a trainer. In Michigan we have training done by local approved associations in most sports, not by the MHSAA. This means the local associations decide who is going to be the trainer. Often times this is a well respected official who knows the rules and how to apply them. Sometimes however this is a person who happens to be available to do the job, and may have no clue. The MHSAA requires trainers to attend an onsite meeting once every two years and do an online meeting every non-on site year.

We do have some organizations that do a wonderful job with training officials, then others who are terrible.

This was my first thought as well. Wrong rotated position and wrong rule application. I'd find training elsewhere.

2-man system through quarter finals. 3-man starts at semi-finals.

I've seen mistakes like this made intentionally by trainers, but not in games with anything on the line. I initially thought that might be the case until I saw the "district championship game" part of the initial post. I really hope this wasn't the case of an intentional mistake for training purposes given what was at stake for the teams.

If this were in a camp or some other instructional environment, I appreciate having an umpire intentionally mess something up so we can train on how to fix it. Obviously the goal is to never make a mistake in the first place, but we can look really foolish if we don't know how to fix it properly. This concept is especially helpful with HS basketball with the correctable error rules, where sometimes the most complex part of fixing the error is determining if it qualifies as a correctable error.