Mike - all of us have our pet rules that we disagree with. However, you, being recognized as the final authority on ASA rules on this board should not be expressing personal beliefs as factual.

When you said "Tagging a runner the defense believes to have attempted to advance to 2B is not an appeal. It is simply tagging a player they believe to be in jeopardy," you were wrong. It is an appeal, it must be live ball appeal, and it must be VERBAL ("she attempted to go to 2B, Blue") or we don't know what they are doing.

Later you come back and admit that you don't agree with the rules, but you still hold to your (wrong) opinion. What do you expect the rest of us to learn if you don't differientate between personal opinion and authoritative factual rules interpretations.

WMB




[Edited by WestMichBlue on Jul 15th, 2004 at 03:36 PM]

I was going to let this go, but I changed my mind.

A scenario was offered and then I was questioned about the verbal part of an appeal.

As far as I'm concerned, a runner which over-runs 1B and makes an attempt to go to 2B is nothing more than an active runner and if a defender tags him with the ball while off the base, there is no need for an appeal.

If I, as the umpire, do not believe the runner made an attempt toward 2B, then I'm going to look for an appeal at the base. If the fielder takes off after the runner, I'm going to considered that an expression of appeal. As I stated before, this is only going to happen if someone from the defense tells him the runner missed the base.

I am not going to watch F3 chase the runner down the line and tag him and then guess or have to ask "why did you do that" or have my partner kill the play if he sees me rule "safe" if F3 says, "I don't know" or "ah...er..because my coach said to?" thus depriving the defense of the proper appeal due to a misunderstanding.

The entire play is common sense and the reason the rule is worded that way in the book is because there had be a problem along the way with someone not being able to understand the entire concept of how to go about getting that out.

I have a good one:

R on 3rd...B draws a walk....and WITHOUT STOPPING[and with no play being made on her naturally...]continues on to 2nd,only using the white..do you count that as 'missing the orange',or do you treat it like a base hit..especially her INTENT was to go to 2nd all along-we have one HS program that does this almost ritually,and I was asked once by an opposing coach if the BR had touched the orange..My response was that no, since there was no play being made on her,the 'safety' base was unnecessary....he bought it at least!

This probably should have been a separate thread, but now that you asked, there is no requirement for a BR to touch the colored portion of a double-base unless there is a play being made on them by an infielder. No ifs, ands or buts, that is ALWAYS the answer.

Concerning the safety base:
The BR can always use both parts of the base. The only exeption to that is if a play is being made on her on first base, with the ball/throw not coming out of the firstbase foul territory.

At least that's in ISF. But I think the other codes treat it similar.

Raoul