Playing beyond third out
 

Any ruleset

Let's say you have a very long inning. You know, "one of those." The team at bat is dropping them into the outfield for base hit after base hit. Slowly, the defense gets an out, then another, then another.

But this drags on so long that after the third actual out is made, the umpires don't realize there are three outs. Two more batters come up to bat before the defense realizes, "hey wait... There are 3 outs."

What do you do?

My guess would be revert back by using the official book and accept your punishment.

Paul

I'd be with you on this one. That'd be the common sense approach to it, but I just have this nagging feeling there's something I'm missing... :D

Me too. Except the punishment part :o

Paul

Fire the umpires and have both teams go to their respective dugouts and stay there until at least 4 members of each team re sober....

Speaking ASA

That half of an inning is over when the third out is recorded. Any subsequent action is irrelevant. (Rule 1-Inning). No runs can score after the 3rd out of a half-inning (5.5.B).

Ignore everything which happened after the 3rd out was executed. The batter due up at the beginning of that teams next at bat would be the first extraneous batter in the previous inning.

Enjoy the practice AB's you had. Inning was over when it was over. The rest was just for fun and never really happened.

Mike, I think you have provided the evidence and rule basis to justify the correct decision and would be supported by interpretation (per ASA rules). Furthermore, I agree with you and would rule accordingly.

However, I would like to point to a very similar instance and how it was ruled earlier this year. It goes like this:
Team A (visiting team) is winning 4-3 in the bottom of the 7th, 1 out. B2 is at bat for Team B (home team) with a runner on second. B2 hit a ball out of the park for the game winning home run. All runners legally touch all the bases, Team B wins. Both umpires leave the field, walk up a slight hill, cross a road, and up a flight of steps to enter the gym/locker room. An assistant coach from team A approaches the umpires and questions if B2 had been re-entered (B2 is the teams DP, was removed earlier in the game while on the bases). PU looks at his line up card to see that B2 was not re-entered into the game. The umpires walk back to the field, declare B2 out, place the runner back to second, and ask B3 to bat with two outs. As luck would have it, the runner scores, the game continues to extra innings, where team A wins in 9.

What do you have? Does team B retain the victory because team A's appeal is not allowed by rule (this code does have the "umpires leaving the field" language)? Does team A win because the game was restated and the had more runs after a complete inning?

Do you see the second scenario as being equal to the first?

I don't see these as equivalent at all. For many reasons. Really, not even similar. The first involved inadvertently continuing to play after a legitimate 3rd out. The one you posted, well, doesn't. At all.

In your sitch, the appeal never happened, and the umpires should never have gone back. Head Coach needed to appeal this while umpires were still on the field. I'm not sure I follow why B2 was called out anyway - probably a misunderstanding of what you wrote on my part though. But even if B2 should have been out, there are rules for appealing this - and those rules were not followed. (Not to mention that AC doesn't have the authority to do this anyway - assuming HC is still in the game).

One happened at the end of an inning, the other at the end of a game, both allowed play to happen that was not suppose to happen.

The answer isn't about what is suppose to happen. Yes, the umpires should have denied the appeal and kept on walking. Then again, the OP, the umpires should not have allowed a team to bat with 3 outs. That's not my question, my question is "what's next?" In my scenario, they did play. What do you rule? Do you forget about play that happened after the "end" of the game or does the game have a new ending?

The difference is that your situation requires a proper protest to fix whereas the OP can still be fixed by a ruling on the field once the error is discovered.

Of course the next question (most likely from the team that is behind) is:

What about the time limit?

Ah... my bad - I see the similarity here, and get where you were going now. Sorry. Yes, retroactively B should be the winner of this game. It was over before anyone returned to play the rest.

Since there are really no OFFICIAL time limit rules, I would hope (but not expect) this was addressed in local rules. Unfortunately, as is almost always the case with local rules - they don't address everything and umpire has to make it up on the fly.

I think I, as UIC, would have no trouble backing up whatever PU decided in this case regarding time limit... so long as the question came up RIGHT THEN, and not at the end of the game. Kind of like injuries in a time-limit game... it's kind of up to us as to whether we should add time to the clock, and if we're going to, we should do it RIGHT THEN and make sure everyone knows it.

Rule 5 sec 10? (ASA)