Unreported Substitute

[Tru_in_Blu]

Gee, you might think this was some kind of SAT or IQ test instead of a simple umpire test [scenario].

I was chastised for reading too much into the question on the construction of the official bat.

We can't choose which rules to interpret literally while ignoring others. That's why the language of the rule book and the test questions is so important. With 40k umpires to maintain, the one common and critical factor is language.

The agrument that "everyone knows what was meant" simply doesn't fly. Best example is the rule change for the fast and modified pitch game where a ball is called on the batter instead of an illegal pitch, because it "was an illegal pitch and were always intended to be a ball on the batter only." So if I had called that play in the last of the seventh inning and allowed the winning run to score from 3rd base as an illegal pitch, and it was protested by the losing team, how would the ruling come out? Like it's written or how it was intended?

Ted