Little League Team Disqualification.
 

Mark, Jr., and I do not umpire LL Softball, so we have a question: Is it illegal for a base runner to steal signals and relay them to the batter?

MTD, Sr.

Apparently little league has made it illegal, no other rule set has any such rule.

Have no idea if there is any video of the game, there are people claiming it was the umpires imagination the signs were being stolen and what they were seeing was nothing more than the runners normal routine. You are aware that was not the team that was disqualified?

How do they know they were stealing anything?

Wow. I googled it and quickly found this right on the official Little League website. Talk about foreshadowing.......

"Stealing and Relaying of Pitch Selection and Location

Starting in 2017, local league umpires will have the option to adopt the rule that the stealing and relaying of signs to alert the batter of pitch selection and/or location is unsportsmanlike behavior. If, in the judgment of the umpire, this behavior is occurring, both the player and the manager may be ejected from the game. The same rule will be mandated during tournament play."

"umpires will have the option" ?????????? :eek: :eek:

That sounds straightforward and non-controversial. :o :( :( :p

Of course, defense has no problem yelling "GOING!" on a steal... I feel that gives their teammates an unfair advantage. ;)

No team was disqualified for sign stealing. A player and coach were ejected.

There was a different team disqualified because a group of its players fingered the opposition and posted a picture of them doing it.

It's pretty obvious at the lever where it happened.

Stupid rule. Umpire's discretion. We hope it will get re-thought.

Lol. True. But the last sentence says "The same rule will be mandated during tournament play." So I'm guessing it was in place for the world series, and I'd almost bet a big emphasis was placed on it. And actually what I posted was just simply a press release type statement telling us about the rule. That's not the actual wording of the rule.

I personally have never caught an opposing player stealing our signs, but I've definitely caught opposing coaches doing it. One lady was coaching first, and I noticed the same little instructional sentences to her batters. It was a code indicating which pitch was being called. I started having fun with it. I'd call the pitch, and then literally say her sentence for her. Her face turned blood red, and she shut up. It was awesome.

It is a stupid rule that just kills the integrity of the game.

OTOH, LL shouldn't be involved in the game of softball to begin.

Please explain !!

Probably more games for those of us who don't umpire LL, if all were in travel ball; but I'm curious about your reasons.
Is it because they can't get it out of the baseball minds?

The tragedy of the whole situation is the realization of the damage a social media post can do nowadays. Once it's on the internet, it can never really be taken down. The six girls who decided to raise their middle finger in that picture will be forever linked to it. And, make no mistake, considering their age and obvious talent level, at least a handful of them were probably beginning to show up on the radars of future college coaches. Probably not after this......

People think they can post anything they want on the internet and there will be no repercussions. I have seen several comments claiming it is free speech and the players had every right to post it. Yes, freedom of speech means they can pretty much say or do anything they want but it does not mean they will not face penalties for their actions. You can say anything you want about your boss on facebook, does not mean they have to retain you as an employee.

My daughters college team had a freshman come in that was very active in posting on facebook, twitter etc. She was posting negative things about the coaches, players etc. Coach called her in, had a discussion with her and explained in no uncertain terms the negative posts would cease immediately. She promptly walked out of the meeting with the coach and posted about how no coach was going to tell her what she could and could not post on social media.

Just so happened the team was flying out that day for a tournament. The girls parents had already left and were driving to the tournament which was several states away. The team drove to the airport in the team bus and as the girls got off the bus they handed them their airline tickets. When said girl got of the plane they told her she had no ticket and would not be traveling with the team. Yes, she was free to post and say anything she wanted, the coach was also free to leave her behind.

I know that. I was refering to the semi-final game in which the team that won was then disqualified for off field action. But its opponent had a player and coach ejected during the semi-final game for stealing signals.

MTD, Sr.

After reading a some posts it seems to me that we had a post about this same signal stealing rule earlier in the season and many umpires including MTD, Jr., and myself included that it was a very stupid rule. If you do not want your signals stolen, then do a better job of hiding them or change them.

MTD, Sr.

I used to sort of enjoy watching the 'Senior Division' Championship game, if only to see what LL can pass off as a National Championship these days to ABC and the sponsors, who are most likely required to carry it as part of the LLWS deal.

I stopped, however, because first of all, the insane LL rule of having a freaking PITCH COUNT in softball just stupefies me to this day. It shows me LL really doesn't give a s**t about softball, and they only do it to keep themselves out of trouble with the corporate people. That, and the 'talent level' is so poor (no offense to the girls) - I'm watching and thinking I've had better JV games There are probably hundreds of decent 16U travel squads that could whip up on either team.

And oh yeah, this business with sign stealing...the fingers and everything, just shows how corrupt LL is - one of the people making the decision on the punishment of the Virginia team was....the guy in charge of the Washington team?????? :rolleyes:

Softball appeared in the scope of LL when the courts ruled they had to accept females as players on the baseball team.

IMO, that was meant to achieve two goals:

Keep the girls off the baseball field and basically, "keep it in the family" when it came time to collect the money from the parents.

And yes, there are girls playing LL baseball, but not nearly as many as there would be had they not added softball.

I've said it before, if I had been king of the ASA, I would have attempted to negotiate with LL to cooperate with each other allowing LL to handle all youth softball for the 12U level and down and ASA take over at the 14U level and up. Share the registration fees and let ASA train the umpires whether paid or volunteer.

IMO, that would have been a win-win for ASA & LL.

Then again, what the hell to I know? :)

I have several problems with this entire mess. First of all, I don't agree with the disqualification of the entire team from the event. I feel that ruling is an absolute overkill on the part of the organization. Yes it was inappropriate and unacceptable.

Second, to advance the losing team from the semi-final, one who had two individuals ejected for unsportsmanlike conduct, to the championship game is just as bad as the disqualification itself.

Several articles have referenced multiple instances of unsportsmanlike behavior from the Kirkland, Wa team that was the target of the middle finger from the Atlee players. I know one such instance was the stealing of the signs, but I wonder if there were other instances also and if event officials were aware of these instances.

Finally, you do have to question if the fact Kirkland, Wa was the home team for this event played any role in the decision making process.

First of all, I thought you were K ASA. :p

The problem would have been rules, better if LL had used "ASA" SOFTBALL rules instead of trying to apply baseball rules to softball. :rolleyes:

Besides, the 10&U keep my knees in shape. ;)

LL rules apparently consider the stealing of signs unsportsmanlike conduct and apparently the effect is the ejection of the player and coach. IMO, it is not UC and that penalty is just as much an overkill as the DQ.

This is what happens when you live in a zero tolerance environment.

LL Softball does NOT have a pitch count rule.

OK, not DQ from tourney. What would have been appropriate?
Suspending or DQ 6 players is essentially the whole team.


One incident of UC should not penalize the whole team in later games.

Do you believe the TD was not monitoring games enough?

Three separate messageboards I frequent have threads about this. I don't claim to have insider knowledge, but there is information out there that makes several of the responses here misguided, in my mind, anyway.

Here are some of the discrepancies I am reading.

1) The social media photo with 6 players giving the finger was actually taken before the semifinal game was even played. It wasn't even a response to supposed acts that were used to justify and rationalize why it was OK by the Atlee parents and coaches.

2) The Kirkland coaches and the TD were reportedly fine with a formal apology. It was other Kirkland parents that insisted further action be taken, and that they would take it higher up if the TD did not.

3) The Kirkland TD did NOT make the decision, knowing that was a no-win situation. He kicked the facts to the National Office, and the National Office made the decision.

4) As others have said, the minimum appropriate response would be to suspend the 6 players. If you define tipping pitch location as unsportsmanlike and deserving ejection of both player and head coach, there is absolutely NO WAY to ignore what these 6 kids did. In what world does that (6 suspended players) not result in a forfeit?

5) Since the photo was (reportedly) prior to the semifinal game, I see it reasonable to (at least consider) postdating the suspensions to prior to that game and declaring it a forfeit. That loss disqualified the team from continuing, not an after-the-fact disqualification. Think of it as having used ineligible players, BECAUSE ....

6) Are you freakin kidding me that LLSB would "cancel" the ESPN spot for that scheduled championship game over this? Weather, maybe; but to cancel this game when you have an administrative solution (making the suspensions retroactive and forfeiting the semifinal) is really unthinkable.

In another forum, I posted this thought:

Accountability and consequences for their actions? A public and national act of unsporting and crude behavior on social media is punished. How dare they??

It's only unfair and unreasonable to the extent that this group of kids have probably never been accountable before in their lives. Blame the parents, and multiply the blame by the excuses and rationalizations pontificated by the parents and coaches.

Thank you, Steve!

On the issue of LL Softball being nothing more than LL Baseball played by girls with a larger yellow ball, that has been changing in the recent past. LL HQ has realized that in order to attract more girls to the LL family, they needed to make LL Softball more like other youth softball programs.

So they have changed things like playing their post-season tournaments on skinned infields, implementing more softball-only rules like requiring a batter to pull the bat back on a bunt attempt or the pitch will be ruled a strike, mandating the catcher must return the ball back to the pitcher after a pitch except on a strike out or play on a runner, look back rule and leaving early rule. Yeah, they still have a way to go. LL doesn't recognize the dead ball appeal in softball. And it penalizes illegal pitches in Majors and Minors with only a ball on the batter (no base advance by runners). But they'll get there.

Like Rich Ives said, there are no pitch count rules in softball. LL does require mandatory rest rules based on innings pitched per day for pitchers 12 and under when they play Majors or Minors. A pitcher can only pitch 12 innings max in a day, and once they pitch seven or more innings in one day, they must rest for one calendar day. But for Juniors and Seniors (including 12 year olds playing up in Juniors), there are no restrictions.

As for this whole disqualification thing, I made plenty of comments in a number of Facebook groups. Suffice it to say that I thought the decision was justified in that LL has a philosophy to uphold that places emphasis on developing model citizens, not stud athletes, when it comes to the entire purpose of the program, and these girls did not live up to that image.

Any lesser punishment would make Williamsport hypocritical in how it treats rule violators. Teams get disqualified from tournament play for players who, intentionally or accidentally, are not eligible to be on a team. It used to be that teams would be required to forfeit games for failing to meet mandatory play rules. They've scaled back on that because some situations were created by circumstances beyond a coach's control. So whether they disqualified the whole Atlee team, or they suspended the seven girls involved in the bird-flipping picture (assuming the one who took the picture and posted it was a player), it resulted in the team's inability to play the championship under either circumstance.

As for Kirkland getting the benefit of playing in the championship, that's not unprecedented in LL tournament play. Anytime a team is disqualified for a violation, LL reverts back to the previous team that would have advanced. When the Jackie Robinson LL team forfeited its US Championship two years ago, the Las Vegas team that lost to them in the US Final was named US champs. It was just serendipitous that Kirkland was in a position to advance because they were 2-2 in Pool A play, and was the third seed from Pool A in the brackets. They had to beat the second seed from Pool B to advance to the game against Atlee.

Atlee and Kirkland had played earlier in the tournament as part of Pool A play. Atlee beat the snot out of them, 16-2, scoring 8 runs in the top of the sixth to run-rule them. Something must have transpired during that game, or afterward before the two teams played each other again in the semifinal, that prompted Atlee to pull off its stupid Snapchat SNAFU. Maybe there was some smack talk that took place in the three days between the two games. Who knows.

Finally, I do think the LL rule on sign-stealing is stupid. The rule is found under LL rule 9.01(d) in the Umpires section, and says, What prompted this rule, I dunno. Perhaps it all came about from the whole "I Won't Cheat" crusade that LL went on when it put those patches on tournament team uniforms, and someone in a position of authority argued that sign stealing was cheating, so it had to be outlawed. Whatever the case, LL felt strong enough to not only have it as an optional rule during regular season play, but to make it a mandatory rule in tournament play. Pretty dumb. We may as well outlaw the stealing of bases as well, since it does involve, well, stealing.

Throughout all of this, all I can picture is the kid standing at second during the LLWS and waving his arms rather dramatically to indicate to the batter whether the catcher was setting up inside or outside. It was so comical that even the talking heads speculated about how distracting it must have been for the batter. Unfortunately, I can't find a video of it, so it must have happened so long ago that it cannot possibly be the impetus for this rule.

People who never played sports think sign stealing is cheating.

Only one problem with this. The 6 girls in the picture didn't violate any rules. Only the individual who posted the picture on social media did.

Rich:

I could not have said it better myself.

MTD, Sr.

Casinos think card counting is cheating, too. In either case, it's not. Using the available information to make the best possible informed decisions is never cheating.

I distinctly remember one year in the baseball LLWS when one of the Asian teams was doing that. And, you're right, they were waving their arms being incredibly obvious to the point the talking heads were noticing it along with everybody else. But, like you surmised, that was several years ago, and probably not the motivation for their current rule.

Giving the finger in uniform in a dugout is perfectly OK. Right.

To whom ?

Why not? Just what does it mean anyway and what authority gave you that information?

It is a perfect case of behavior control that does nothing but prove Ivan Pavlov's theory was correct.

A word is just a word, a gesture is just a gesture and has no more power than what you provide it. If you get offended by such a thing it is because YOU chose to be offended.

But still not the point. The violation was posting it in a social media environment and only one person did that, not six

'Twas sarcasm.

So if someone commits an act only the reporter is guilty?

Me too. ;) ;) :rolleyes:

If the reporter was the one breaking the rules, absolutely.

A Different Take on the Team Disqualification.
 

time: July 2000

place: University of Indiana

event: AYBTour Boys' and Girls' National Basketball Championship Tournament.


I was there to officiate. The teams were housed in the dorms on campus. The boys' tournament was played first.

The boys' teams were in the process of moving out of the dorms and the girls' teams were in the process of moving in to the dorms with the girls' tournament to start the next day.

I do not remember where this particular girls' team was from, but the previous year this team had won the girls' national championship at the 8th grade age group and had made it back to the nationals and was the favorite to win the 9th grade national championship.

During the move out and move in process the entire girls' team flashed members of some of the boys' teams that were standing on the side walk in front of the dorm. The girls' team was disqualified from the tournament before even playing a game.

MTD, Sr.

That is hilarious and sad at the same time.