Batter awarded 1st base?

[NCASAUmp]

Originally Posted by greymule

You are of course correct that we cannot ignore even idiotic rules. In 10u rec, however, they're not paying you to make a shambles of the game. Are you going to call every illegal pitch in 10u rec? Is your strike zone going to be as the book defines it? Are you going to enforce the lookback rule according to the book? Are you going to let runners break for the next base on the throw to the mound, or are you going to call time out to end the chaos when the runners stop?

Incidentally, I can cite some rules that I would never call, partly because they're bad rules, partly because almost nobody knows them.

And that's basically what I was getting at. If I'm calling a purely rec game with small kids, I'm not going to go by the exact letter of the rulebook, and you'd be deluding yourself if you say you'd do otherwise. As long as the defense does not gain some sort of advantage and as long as the integrity of the game is preserved, I will not call it for small kids. If a coach wants to protest it, s/he may, and I'll let the league decide if they really want me to nitpick every rule on a 10U game.

Mind you, I don't call FP. I only call SP. However, for the first 4 years of my umpiring career, I called kids' games, ranging from age 9 through 14.