Illegal Pitches and when's enough?

[Manny A]

Originally Posted by Linknblue

Guys,
I know the pitches were illegal. I know I and my partner could have called every pitch. Advantage, disadvantage is really I suppose irrelevant to my question. If a coach "refuses" to remove a pitcher after you've called 10 illegal pitches and it's cost him runs it puts umpires in a funky position. I know in the rule of rules that IP are supposed to be called. After we called about 10 the fans started in with "Quit taking the game away, allow the girls to play!" and all the other crap that goes along with being protective of their kid......they don't understand "all" the nuances that go into pitching.

My question is what would you guys do in a "fun" A level tournament (Not a qualifier in any way.)

I didn't like the position the coach put us in but I can also see the other side where "It's kid's softball and they're kids" angle. I supposed we could have taken the hard line and of course become the "ruinators" of the afternoon for probably 60 plus kids and adults.

Would the hard line be the course you would all take? Call every pitch and turn a game into a fiasco?

As it was the game ended 3 to 0 and we gave the winning team 2 of the 3 runs. Why only 2 runs......we were trying to drive a point home....albiet being selective when we called IP a time or two.

Go ahead, I'm ready for your wrath.

This is one of the conundrums of umpiring. I face it even at the high school and Juco level from time to time. A pitcher just can't stop leaping, no matter how often you call IPs.

Those girls are the ones who, when they were playing 12U, were doing it and not being called on it by sympathetic umpires who wanted to avoid being the "ruinators". They move up to 14U and 16U, and still eventually get away with it. And then when they're playing high school ball or in national qualifiers, where rules are expected to be enforced with prejudice, they can't adjust to what they've been doing for years, and those umpires become the bad guys/gals.

Meanwhile, the umpires at 12U who do call it a few times and then stop, they become "the other umpires [who] let us do it!" Now you've contributed to another conundrum in our trade--inconsistency.

And here's another problem that rears its ugly head from time to time: You get the opposing head coach to agree to cut the pitcher some slack because it's ruining the game. So then this pitcher starts dominating the game, and he's getting frustrated that his players can't hit anything. Now he complains that she's getting away with much more than what was agreed upon, and what was supposed to be a fun game turns into a snipe war. No thanks.

Look, you do what you feel you have to do, but it shouldn't be because you want to avoid lopsided games or sh!tstorms from the fans. But realize that your decision to ignore the infractions contribute to long-lasting effects beyond what happens in your game. It doesn't help the girl, and it causes blowback to umpires who will call it as required.