I completely agree. My above discussions are only based on what the book says and how I would rule in live play or as a UIC (Bases on the rules as written)

Wow. I wouldn't put much faith in a sanctioning body who's Case Book is so out of whack that it "has no merit", to the point that the umpires simply disregard it.

(And I was registered with NSA a couple of seasons and worked some of their tournaments. Never had the occassion to invoke an out on the Look Back Rule and was never instructed to call this any differently than the rest of the softball world.)

If a "tie goes to the runner" :rolleyes: .... then in this case I'd have to say that a tie goes to the interpretive guidelines issued by the sanctioning body for whom you are working games. Having not one, but two, separate Case Plays saying the ball is dead on a LBR violation is pretty strong evidence that it's not a "typo" or a "mistake"- it's what they really mean!

Just out of curiosity, what other glaring mistakes can be found in the NSA Case Book?

Not to be flippant, but we are discussing NSA - an alphabet soup org of little repute. Its glorified rec. and NSA (only) umpires I've worked with display the lack of real training that org provides. What would be the expectation exactly?

Careful, wade. Here in MN, the state association for ASA has been losing ground for several years against a cacophony and shifting landscape of organizations.

The reasons behind this have nothing to do with the rules or with umpire training, but the effect is if you want to umpire fastpitch, you need to umpire the sanctioning organization that has the teams where you are. I'm an ASA-trained umpire, but I find that I actually umpire fewer and fewer true ASA games every year. NSA isn't here (yet), but plenty of others from U-trip to NAFA (for girls, not men). AFA made a brief appearance, but appears to have flamed out locally.

Unfortunately, we have a very similar fight going on here; with a fairly new and obscure alphabet org .. these things stemming from fees and money and TDs and nothing to do with the umpiring or organizations. Plus the premier thing is obviously going on in CA. That org is using the ASA umpires and that drama is heating up and should be a good inferno by next year I would think.

Actually why in my post I specified NSA only umps.. of which it is obvious NSA provides little to no training (or at least quality training) for their officials, a fact that glares when they walk on the field.

I find it to be a real issue of consideration that these orgs do little to train or advance their umps and instead leach off of ASA umpire...

but there are worthwhile arguments to the contrary .. not the least of which are the "ind contractor" issue, lack of ASA games as ASA is seeming to decline in many areas (with some help/support of ASA trained umpires IMO), and the fact many pay for their trianing.

Loyalty is also dying or non existent for most.. I admit inner turmoil as to how to proceed in the current climate. IMO, ASA does bear some responsibility. I am hopeful it is not ignored or denied, but recognized and accepted and actions taken to help us again grow. We know ASA is the finest.. but if its not happening, what good is that other than a platitude?

The alphabet soup org taking hold in our area is so small and completely irrelevent as to be laughable, even NSA has more credibility.. but teams dont care, they just want to play and they are under pricing ASA orgs then simply using ASA umpires.

Its quite disturbing IMO.

My experience as an NSA umpire was...unusual.

All I had to do was pay the $35 annual dues, buy a shirt and hat and- bada bing, bada boom!- I was in. No meetings, zero training and I'm working my first NSA tournament.

Several of the "senior" partners I worked with seemed to make up their own mechanics that didn't follow any sort of standard. I mean, they were nice guys and all, but you wouldn't know who might be covering what from one game to the next.

I work my first couple of pool games and the TD and UIC stop by the field to watch "the new guy". They must have liked what they saw, because I got invited back the next day and even got put on the 16U championship game. Didn't have any problems with that and got positive feedback from the assigner.

I'm figuring that I might stick with NSA awhile, at least for those rare weekends where ASA doesn't have anything going on around here. But even after the positive feedback, the guy that scheduled their umpires called me back exactly one time the entire summer!

I worked a couple of games for them the next year, with the same good results and feedback, and that was all that was offered to me- a couple of games. It hardly seemed worth the effort to maintain my registration and I decided to focus on ASA after that.

Starting out my first year with ASA, I was asked to work tournaments every weekend from mid-May through mid-August, with the exception of one tourney that had a really small number of teams/games and one weekend that ASA didn't have anything scheduled in my area (I went and worked independent men's fastpitch tournaments for a buddy of mine those weekends).

NSA did seem to gaining a foothold in girl's fastpitch in Ohio, until a couple of fiascos at big tournaments involving rainy weekends, team refunds, poor field maintenance and national qualifying spots being determined by coin flips. These resulted in a lot of ticked off customers and a bit of an exodus away from NSA the following year.

Locally, they have a huge presense in slow pitch. Back a few years ago they came in and underbid ASA by a few bucks to sanction and run all of he city sponsored slow pitch leagues, covering, about 2500 total games each summer and fall.

Giving an update on what NSA rules are in regards to LBR. At first I didn't realize I had received an answer from Terri, who is the Indiana Youth FP State UIC. It was kinda buried in the emails we were exchanging about tournaments. I asked my partners last weekend about this situation, and they were all 100% sure that a LBR violation creates an IDB. One of them stated it pretty much how I felt about it, saying "Softball is softball". But I did finally unearth Terri's response, and she did state that the ball is dead in this situation. So it appears the Case Book is correct.