Courtesy Runner/Substition clarification
 

The following situation happened in an ASA 35+ State Tournament. One courtesy runner allowed per inning which can be any player on the roster(courtesy runner can be in the line-up or it can be an eligible sub). Team has 12 players and they are batting 11. Tie game, bottom of 7th. Batter leads off inning with a hit down the line and hobbles into 2nd base. Team elects to use a courtesy runner for him. The next batter is intentionally walked. The 3rd batter hits into a double play and the lead runner moves to 3rd. The next 2 batters are intentionally walked to load the bases which brings up the player who is courtesy running. At this point the team batting tries to substitute their bench player who has not played yet to into the game and bat in that position. The other team complains and after a long discussion which eventually involves the UIC it is decided that the courtesy runner must come off the base and it is an out and the substitute is not allowed to enter the game for either the courtesy runner or the original lead-off hitter? This didn't seem like the correct interpretation? Anyone one have any thoughts or insight? I know that if the courtesy runner had been injured going from 2nd to 3rd that a substitute would have been allowed and the original hitter could have gone back to 3rd and the substitute allowed for the injured player. So does this really become a timing situation? The 2 batters intentionally walked after the double play were done so in an informal manner(i.e., the manager said we will walk the next 2 batters)....so there really wasn't an opportunity to call time in between the first and second batter to call time and announce what would have been a legal substitution for the on deck batter at the time.

What would you normally do if a batter scheduled to bat is not available to bat?

Call them out.

If I had a substitute I would enter them so he would be the player scheduled to bat.

The CR rule for slow pitch is not something that the offense can "game." The player's time to bat is when the previous time at bat has finished - in this case, when the second walk was issued (and in slow pitch, the walk is a dead ball).

It seems that your team was just caught up in the rule; you took your gamble in that the runner would be on base when it was his time to hit. It seems the defense played it perfectly.

You have to plan when the runner could come to bat. Had it this past weekend (45 over tournament). A team needed to use a CR, wanted to send out someone, but other members realized he could be due up to bat.

Folks, I assure you i know nothing about the slow pitch game, but in ASA fast pitch if a runner is on base when their turn to bat comes up, they remain on base, their position is skipped in the batting order and the next batter comes up with no penalty. This would happen if there were multiple batting out of order in the inning that were not caught or reported.

The rule is 7.2.D.4 "If batting out of order is discovered...."

4. Runners shall not be removed from the base occupied, except the batter-runner who has been removed from the base by the umpire as in (2) above to bat in the proper position. The correct batter misses their turn at bat with no penalty. The batter following the correct batter in the batting order becomes the legal batter.
Note – Section 2D(1-4): In 16-inch slow pitch an appeal must be made prior to a pitch, legal or illegal, or a hesitation.

I don't know if this applies to the situation you post.

Looks like it, although the defensive team had no idea as they were just loading the bases to set up a force play everywhere. They didn't say anything until we were making the substitution as the umpires had no idea how to interpret the rule. We reported the substitution and then all hell broke loose and the UIC was brought over.

I know when we played in the 40 and over National in 2009 that they allowed substitutions if you had them and in fact sometimes teams substituted for the hitter who was due up and other times substituted for the runner to allow him to hit so when we were discussing who we should run I mentioned that it was possible that he could end up batting but we had a sub so we were covered.

The rule probably needs to be tweaked or cleaned up as there are a few scenarios that could play out....The walks were kind of informal as in the pitcher says we will walk the next 2 hitters which was treated as 1 action by the umpires where if they had walked the first batter we could have called time and placed our substitute in the line-up spot prior to the 2nd walk being issued or had the runner on 3rd feign injury which would allow the original hitter to return to the bases and the substitute to then enter for the "injured" player......we were not in that mindset based on how the rules were interpreted at the 40 and over national a few years prior.

Live and learn. All the lesson cost us was a probable state title.

That does not apply to the slowpitch courtesy runner option. The one caveat to "anyone can be the courtesy runner" is exactly this scenario; if that person's time to bat comes up and he/she is still on base, the runner is removed and that is recorded as an out. Know that effect, and pick your courtesy runner accordingly.

This is not a BOO situation, FP or SP

Not even worth a discussion :)

Rule 8 9.C.2 specifically states that if a courtesy runner's turn at bat comes when that player is on base, s/he shall be removed from the base, ruled out and take their turn at bat.

There are no exceptions to this rule

Couldn't the offensive team have substituted the eligible sub for the current batting spot. This would render the courtesy runner to be "benched" but was still eligible to run as any person on the roster, including substitutes, could be the courtesy runner. While the courtesy runner's spot did come up to bat, why wouldn't a substitution negate the out? In theory, the runner on third is not the courtesy runner, but the original hitter, and the person coming to bat is on the bench. A substitution would keep that hitter on the bench.

we did have a sub available and could have called time and entered the substitute into the batting order before the 2nd walk was issued(this wasn't our plan as we believed we could use our substitute whenever) but the two intentional walks were handled casually and informally and treated as 1 event without either player actually coming to the plate so even if we had wanted to we would not have had the opportunity to make the substitution legally. .....once the 2nd intentional walk was completed was when the courtesy runners official at bat begins so he had to come off of 3rd base which created the 3rd out of the inning. If we had called time after the first intentional walk and substituted for the now on-deck courtesy runner or even for the original batter who was being ran for I believe we would have been fine....some lessons are learned the hard way.

I'm curious about the ruling if Sioux23 had sent the batter after the CR to 2nd and the batter after him/her to 1st.

Too late to appeal BOO?