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Pretty amazing that the Giants were the first MLB club in 28 years to win a protest this week, but not so amazing when you stop to think that an MLB umpire generally has 3 other highly trained umpires to check with should a manager say that he's misinterpreted the rules, so there are very, very few protests filed.

 

It got me wondering how often protests are lodged at other levels.  I've yet to see one in HS.  In travel my kid guested on a team that won one -- in that tournament the manager had to cough up $150 cash to file a protest, which tends to suppress frivolous protests.  When I was a LL board member we used to get a few per season.  In my own role as a LL manager I put 3  protests on the books, all of which I'm sure I would have won, but in each case we won the game, so they never got aired.

Last edited by JCG
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Had one in Legion three years ago... We were the visiting post and about the 5th inning or so the host post coach (a former major leaguer) decided to "question" the legality of our bats. Suffice to say the umpire (who works every game for that post, hmmm) decided a number of our bats were illegal (we had been using them all year) and had them removed from the game. Our coach protested at the point, but we were forced to play out the game with what some would refer to as hand me downs :-).  At the time of the protest we were leading, but didn't get any more hits and the other post "won" that day as we were a bit shorthanded in the pitching department...

 

Our protest was heard and we "won" the protest, but the state Legion board decided to have the teams "wait" until the end of the season to determine whether the game would matter.  Yep - it did - for us.  Rather than have our post travel the 90+ minutes to the other post - they found a more central location and we picked the game up at the point of interruption.  You think the story would end here - right?  Well not so fast.  In the original game we had 10-11 of our 18 rostered players on the lineup card, but for the "completion" we had all 18 available. However, the usual 5 minute plate conference took about 45 minutes as the two teams argued over whether we could use the players that weren't there for the original game. In the end, the decision was no we couldn't since they weren't on the lineup card. That led to another protest being filed by us, but the game was played. Now we had 3 pitchers in the lineup (who normally won't hit and don't regularly play in the field other than to pitch), but yet still ended up 10-running the other post. Since we won, the second protest was moot, but I believe from reading the rules that we would have won that one too since what matters is rostered players.

 

Because of our win, that got us into the playoffs which we were hosting. In NH just because you host doesn't mean you get a bye into the playoffs - only the top 4 teams in each of 2 districts of 10 or so teams each make it. Since we were hosting, we could choose the play the late game of the day instead of the 9AM game. Our decision meant the team that we just beat (who was already in the playoffs) would have to play the 9AM game (two days later).  For them it was a 90 minute drive, plus the ~60 minutes you have to be there beforehand.  Needless to say our team was more than happy with that outcome... I also saw a couple of the Legion board members with smiles on their faces - as I understand it that post results in numerous "complaints" each year for various things.

 

Originally Posted by JCG:

It got me wondering how often protests are lodged at other levels.  I've yet to see one in HS….

 

In the last 12 years of HS ball that I’ve scored personally, I had to note in the book 3 times for protests. Twice it made no difference because the protesting team won. The other time the protest was denied. Last season in 2 local leagues there was 1 protest filed and it was upheld because the official admitted he’d misapplied a rule.

 

IOW, protests look to be few and far between, but when you’re talking about 16,000+ schools every year playing more than 250,000 games, there’s bound to be a few protests.

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