The crow-hop

[chris s]

Hey guys, can someone describe this illegal(?) pitch to me? My daughters coach(very good one, I might add) was asking me about this other pitcher at a "Majors) game the other nite. Girl would wind-up as usual and then the pivot foot would move forward and re-set about 6 -10 inches in front of rubber for final blast-off. He is saying that pivot foot must be dragged on ground after bl;ast-off???
Thanks.......BBump(trying to figue this strange game out) LOL

[SamNVa]

A crow hop occurs when the pivot foot leaves the pitching plate and replants prior to the release of the ball. ASA goes on to say that the pitcher must push off from the replant point in order for the motion to be called a crow hop. Regardless of which definition you use, the motion you described certainly sounds like a crow hop to me.

SamC

[chris s]

Originally posted by SamNVa
A crow hop occurs when the pivot foot leaves the pitching plate and replants prior to the release of the ball. ASA goes on to say that the pitcher must push off from the replant point in order for the motion to be called a crow hop. Regardless of which definition you use, the motion you described certainly sounds like a crow hop to me.

SamC

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BINGO!! We got a BALK, ooops, wrong game...LOL Kinda tough to judge the release at the time of replant, but I think we got the bird-pitch here. Penalty??? Thanks Sam

[chris s]

Originally posted by SamNVa
A crow hop occurs when the pivot foot leaves the pitching plate and replants prior to the release of the ball. ASA goes on to say that the pitcher must push off from the replant point in order for the motion to be called a crow hop. Regardless of which definition you use, the motion you described certainly sounds like a crow hop to me.

SamC

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My daughters game bout week and 1/2 ago, F1 is definately doing this "crow" thing(where the did they get this name??), coach asks blue to watch it, ump jumps down his throat that "she's not gaining advantage", I dunno bout that, 40 feet minus 6-10 inches sounds like an advantage to me.....comments???

[whiskers_ump]

cris s wrote:

"F1 is definately doing this "crow" thing(where the did they get this name??)"

cris,

Ever see a crow walk around. NO, they hop. . I know
this is more of a bounce, but best I could do.

glen

[greymule]

While a crow hop is defined as a replant of the pivot foot, watch carefully and you'll see that the good pitchers do replant to some degree, with at least the ball of the foot but not the entire length.

They all release several inches in front of the rubber, and they are certainly gaining at least some stability from the pivot foot. It seems that as long as the push, the drag, and the release are immediate parts of one quick motion, she's OK, even though the actual release is unquestionably in front of the rubber with the foot as anchor.

The true crow hop is usually obvious. It's the hop and then the arm motion, rather that everything at once. The pivot foot usually gets a little airborne, too, and doesn't drag away from the rubber (thus the "hop").

Watch a crow sometime. They hop extremely quickly, so that they're in one place and then another, but it's very hard to see the motion in between.

[Skahtboi]

[B]

Originally posted by SamNVa
...ump jumps down his throat that "she's not gaining advantage..."

One of the great myths of the game, right up there with "the hands are part of the bat." I have heard this from several umpires, which really chaps my butt when I hear it. Once, years ago, when I was first starting out in umpiring, I attended a league clinic where the clinician actually told us not to call illegal pitches on the pitchers when they leapt unless you felt like they were gaining an advantage. I asked him this one simple question, and all hell broke loose. The question was, "tell me, where in the rule book does it say anything about 'gaining an advantage' when it describes the criteria for an illegal pitch?!"

Scott

[Dakota]

Originally posted by Skahtboi
...really chaps my butt when I hear it.

My view, also, Scott. If I am not mistaken, this shaving of the rules if there is no advantage gained is a baseball tradition, and you will find it applied to situations other than illegal pitch -- see the discussion earlier about obstruction and blocking the base.

On the crowhop, however, I can't see how this "no advantage" claim even holds up (assuming the tradition was valid). How is it not an advantage to pitch from 6-10 inches closer to home?

IMO, the various bodies that sanction fastpitch need to either get tough with umpires on the crowhop / leap rule, or they need to modify the rule to line up with how it is being called -- see Mike's comment about Cat. Here the premier pitcher in arguably the premier sanctioning body for 18-23 yo fastpitch is (according to many) not pitching according to the rules. Wonderful.

(I don't mean to start something here on NCAA v ASA - it's just that the college game is a lot more visible than the adult fastpitch level of ASA, except during Olympic years).

To continue to have a rule that the majority of umpires refuse to enforce (for whatever reason) or don't know how to enforce is not good, and hurts the integrity of the game and the officials.

[greymule]

The only time I buy "not gaining an advantage" is in rec games where a girl has a motion that is technically illegal but that isn't affecting the pitches she is lobbing in. She's bringing her hands together twice or rocking back or something, and you tell her about it but she has a hard time correcting it.

You can call it every time and ruin the game, or you can tell the coaches about it so they can work with her.

But in a more serious game, you have to call it.

I have done a great deal of FP and watched a lot of high-level pitchers both from behind the plate and from the much better perspective in the field. I watched two of New Jersey's best high school pitchers a couple of nights ago. They all deliver from well in front of the rubber. And no one could argue that the pivot foot isn't at least providing stability and serving as an anchor.

I agree with Dakota about ASA having to come up with a better definition. The book specifies "the act of a pitcher who steps, hops, or drags off the front of the pitcher's plate, replants the foot, establishing a second impetus (or starting point), pushes off from the newly established starting point, and completes the delivery." Nothing about an actual hop or having the foot airborne, though that does make it more obvious.

Fed says simply: "A replant of the pivot foot prior to delivering the pitch."

Watch them carefully. They all do it.

[CecilOne]

Dakota makes some good points:
"the various bodies that sanction fastpitch need to either get tough with umpires on the crowhop / leap rule, or they need to modify the rule to line up with how it is being called ... snip ... To continue to have a rule that the majority of umpires refuse to enforce (for whatever reason) or don't know how to enforce is not good, and hurts the integrity of the game and the officials", except that lining up the rules with how it is being called would take about 25 pages of zig-zag lines.

I see some factors to overcome:
1) illegal pitches are judgemental and require training and focus
2) each rule body defines them a little differently, even those that require the same number of feet on the plate
3) coaches will always argue "she's been legal for 99 years", "no one else calls that", etc.
4) certain umpires seem to think it's a macho thing to "let them play" or that the "best call is always a no-call"
5) the constant lack of calling them has gained momentum to the point that umpires don't call them because they get negative reactions from other umpires for disrupting (i.e., lengthening) the game or because they get negative images in their associations and future assignments
6) the coaches and players understand the rule even less consistently than we do, partly our fault, mostly not caring

[Skahtboi]

Originally posted by greymule

Watch them carefully. They all do it.

You can't be serious! I know of several who don't. They have been coached well and can deliver a pitch completely within the parameters of the rules. Two of the best HS seniors from this region (both already signed with D1 schools) have a lot of power, a plethora of pitches, and both deliver well within the NFHS code.

Scott

[greymule]

Skahtboi: I don't doubt that the pitchers you cite do nothing that an umpire or coach would consider illegal. However, I would be very surprised if at the moment one of them makes the release, the ball of her pivot foot is not several inches in front of the rubber and in subtantial contact with the ground. And they are certainly not delivering during the drag; their pivot foot has stopped and is giving them plenty of support. Go out to a mound and try it yourself. You'll see—you are delivering off the back foot after the drag forward, not during it.

Check out the mound after a game. Forward from the rubber, the pitchers' shoes have carved a gully that ends in a larger depression from which they've been releasing the ball.

It's not that the motion is truly illegal: it is legal by tradition and custom. But because the definition of "crow hop" is not precisely and accurately worded, that motion is in technical violation. Therefore, the rule should be refined to be more precise.

One simple example: the ASA definition specifies "steps, hops, or drags." But ask any umpire, and he'll tell you that as long as the pitcher drags the foot and doesn't hop (get into the air), she's OK. After all, it's the crow hop that's illegal, so if there's no hop. . . . In fact, the Fed interpreter in New Jersey says that the pitcher's foot can lose contact with the ground if the gully gets deep, as long as the foot does not rise above the level of the surrounding ground! Well, these are prima facie contradictions of the rule book.

Incidentally, I'm not saying that rewording the rule would be easy. It would require analysis of films, with plenty of stop action, as well as people who know how to write very precisely, not ASA's forte. (I think that one aspect would be a lack of immediate progression in the delivery. What we usually call illegal involves a noticeable break between the elements of the delivery.) It might indeed take "25 pages of zig-zag lines"!

[Edited by greymule on May 16th, 2003 at 05:37 PM]

[ChampaignBlue]

Did any of you see the NorthWestern V SWTS game on espnII tonight? I thought that the SWTS pitcher was suspect in that she would land on the cleats of her pivot foot and release as her lead foot landed. It wasn't called so I assumed it was an NCAA thing. I believe they are televising another game on Sunday at 2. Jim

[Dakota]

Originally posted by greymule
In fact, the Fed interpreter in New Jersey says that the pitcher's foot can lose contact with the ground if the gully gets deep, as long as the foot does not rise above the level of the surrounding ground! Well, these are prima facie contradictions of the rule book.

ASA states directly in the rule that the pitcher's foot may lose contact with the bottom of the hole as long as it does not go higher than the level plane of the ground, so I would consider this a reasonable interpretation of the rule for Fed.

If, as stated in the thread about Cat (can't spell her last name), the top pitchers have developed a crow hop that is too fast to see without slow motion replay, well, good for them. But, when it is seen, it still isn't called at the NCAA level. Can anyone remember a crow hop being called ever in a Div I NCAA game? They can't all be invisible.

Fortunately, I deal with considerably less skilled pitchers, and their leaping and slipping off the front of the plate to push off 3-4 inches in the dirt is much easier to see. I rarely see a true "hopless" crow hop. Leaps, mostly.

[CecilOne]

Originally posted by ChampaignBlue
Did any of you see the NorthWestern V SWTS game on espnII tonight? I thought that the SWTS pitcher was suspect in that she would land on the cleats of her pivot foot and release as her lead foot landed. It wasn't called so I assumed it was an NCAA thing. I believe they are televising another game on Sunday at 2. Jim

See my #5 above.