Today, I saw something happen that was so rare that I cannot remember the last time I saw it occur, and it was great to see how eveyone handled the situation. UC Riverside was playing at Sac State. Sac State had a batter up with 2 outs, who attempted to bunt. The ball was fouled off (less than 2 strikes) and sort of blooped back to the catcher, but the ball didn't rise above the catcher's head. Catcher caught the ball, showed HP ump who signaled 3rd out and UCR Highlanders were off the field and ready to hit.
Before the Sac State Hornet players took the field, the Sac State coach approaches HP ump and they talk, both infield umpires come in to discussion and they talk some more.
Finally, they break up and HP ump goes over to Highlanders dugout and explains that the call should have just been a foul ball, and not called out on the catch. Highlander coach doesn't agree and they have a discussion, but everyone is civil and finally after quite a long talk with nobody on the field at all, the UCR players go back out and batter comes back up to the plate. Batter grounds out on the next pitch and now UCR really does get to come to bat.
While Sac Stat's coach was professsional in the way he discussed the situation, I was most impressed with the Home Plate umpire for listening to him, and conferring with the base umpires to make sure the got the call correct. UCR coach was also quite professional, though obviously unhappy with the overturned call. It takes a lot of guts to overturn your own call when the team that was on the field already has a hitter standing in the on-deck circle ready to go. They got it correct and most everyone in the stands was commending them for a job well done, even the highlander fans.
Way to go, gentlemen.
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