Coach's View of the Look-Back Rule

[RKBUmp]

Originally Posted by MD Longhorn

I'm stunned at coaches that have no idea about this rule. If you've coached more than 2-3 games in softball (as opposed to being a baseball dad who is coaching softball because he has a daughter), you should know this rule.

Well, that is going to depend on how the umpires they are getting it are calling it. Helped a neighbor coach a rec team a couple of years ago, just so happens to be the same league I did for years but they had gone to NSA sanction and switched to a different umpiring group.

During entire season not one lookback violation called, nor ever an obstruction call EVER. It really came to a head in one game where we had specifically been instructing our pitchers they were not to attempt to throw out runners standing off base, they were to just stand there with the ball doing nothing. Runner rounds 3rd and stops about 3 steps off the base, pitcher has ball in circle. Runner stands there, and stands there. I can see pitcher is getting itchy and I tell her DO NOT THROW THE BALL. Runner continues to stand there, as you can figure out this is well past a lookback violation. Finally after about 30 seconds the pitcher can't resist any longer and throws the ball and as you can guess the run scores.

I was completely fed up and went to the umpire assignor and asked why the published rules were not being enforced. The answer I got was, "we are giving the umpires leeway in the way they call the game because we want the girls to learn the game of softball." I asked her how we were ever suppose to teach the girls the game when we were operating under 30 different umpires rule sets and the most basic rules of the game were being ignored.

Wish I had a cricket sound effect to insert because that was about the same response I got.................. Relaxing the rules is not helping teach anyone the game, just as ignoring illegal pitches and just talking to the coach about it never fixes the pitcher.