Controversial Call (No Call)?

[tcannizzo]

Originally Posted by UmpireErnie

Tony, you never mentioned making a safe call on this play but I am assuming you did.

Line 4: "R1 coming home and slides under the tag at the plate. SAFE!"
That was meant to indicate that I called her Safe.

Originally Posted by UmpireErnie

The runner who has now scored has no reason to move any further until the fielder gets off her. Since she should have heard your safe call she knows this. So for her to get impatient and to shove the catcher to the ground to me sounds completely unwarranted and could certainly be considered as MC.

Right, except for get the heck off of me. I was thinking the same thing that R1 was - What are you doing "Catch"?

Originally Posted by UmpireErnie

If it was an 18U game do you think you would have ejected the runner? I may be reading between the lines in your post but it sounds as if maybe you didn't want to eject simply because she is a 10 year old. Sure they are cute but they can be tossed!

If this happened a couple weeks ago, I would have tossed the 10 y/o immediately. But with these recent college game discussions, I am really confused about defining MC/USC. I have a few cases in mind that would leave no doubt, but this one I have to classify as more gray area. Maybe I am over-analyzing it.

Originally Posted by UmpireErnie

Having said that, having not decided at the time to eject it sounds like your game management with the moments following this incident were excellent. Apparently the game continued and all was well.

One of the factors I used was that how to best keep control of the rest of the game. And this may have been my overriding decision point.
Eject someone, and then there may be retaliation, and possible further ejections.

A berth was riding on the game and I hoped that I sent a loud and clear message to players, coaches and even parents.