Run scores ... or not... or yes it does 2 innings later

[Manny A]

Originally Posted by chapmaja

As for protests. The reason many states don't accept protests is simple. They simply do not have the ability to rule on protests in a timely manner to avoid impacting the entire post-season.

I will use Michigan for example.

We have Tuesday Pre-district games. If a game were to be protested in this game, they would have until Friday or Saturday to have the protest ruled upon, and if needed finish the game from the point of the protest.

What if the protest happen in a district semi-final Saturday morning. The state has 128 different districts being played, with the semi-finals played first, then the district finals.

Who would make a decision on a protest? Would it be up to the tourney manager (who is likely an AD, who often has no idea of the rules for softball)? Would it be the umpires? We don't have an UIC for HS events, so there is no neutral party at each site. Do they call into the state office for a ruling on a protest? What if documentation needs to be provided? Some of the schools barely have bathrooms around the fields, let alone the ability to provide information to the state office.

What happens if the semi-final is played, and Team A wins, but Team B protested something during the game. The district final is supposed to be played the same day, following the semi-finals. Do they postpone the district final? Do they play the district final which Team A is in. What if they play the final, but Team B's protest is upheld and the semi-final now needs to be replayed. Now you also may need to play the district final over because of the different outcome of the semi-final.

Allowing protests for misapplications of the rules sounds like a good idea, but in many cases it is not a practical endeavor because of the shear size of the event going on. In Michigan we have 128 districts almost all of which are played on Saturday after Memorial Day. Those each contain 3 games (SF, SF, Final), so we are talking about a lot of potential hassle if protests were allowed.

It can work much better in the event that it is a single site event. Events like ASA, NSA, or other single site tourney's can have protests rather easily. In those events you have a UIC on site that can make a ruling very quickly in the event of a protest, and as a result the entire event won't be delayed. That is not easily possible in high school softball statewide tourney's.

Give me a break. Have you ever worked tournament play in Little League? Williamsport is the final arbiter of any and all protests during tourney games, even down to the district level. Their policy is, and has been for as long as I remember, that a manager may protest a rule misinterpretation, and if he/she isn't happy with the umpire's decision after the umpires get together to discuss, he/she may elevate it up to the tournament director, then the regional headquarters, and finally to LL HQ. What LL HQ says is final.

There are probably thousands of LL district games going on starting the last week in June in the US alone. Who knows how many others are taking place in the international regions. I would hazard a guess and say maybe five to ten times as many games. The chances are pretty good that W-port is dealing with hundreds of protests every day during district play. And I'm guessing that the staff at W-port that handles protests numbers maybe 10-15 people, tops.

When a rules misapplication protest is lodged, the game is stopped immediately, and not restarted until the protest is resolved. There is no "keep playing and we'll resolve the protest within 24 hours" like you see in MLB play. They get it taken care of right then and there so that it doesn't affect play later.

As a district UIC and tournament director in past years, I've had to deal with a few protests in our local LL. It usually takes anywhere from 10-20 minutes to get a protest all the way up to W-port and get an answer back. Once that answer was received, the game started right back up. The only impact was a slip in the daily schedule of games. No biggie.

So I laugh when someone says that a state cannot handle protests. Even in your "extreme" scenario of 128 districts, the probability of a more than ten protests being lodged at any one time for the state staff to deal with is infinitesimal. And if it really feels that it cannot handle it, then the state staff should delegate protest resolution to the next lower level. It can be easily organized well ahead of time, the right people contacted to let them know of their responsibilities, and be ready and announced before the first pitch of post-season play. It just takes a little initiative. JMO, but for states that say they can't do it, they are just shirking their duty.