We Don't Call That

quote:

"Our association thinks that is a stupid rule so we don't call that." I asked him if he felt like as an umpire he had the authority to rewrite the rule book to his desire and he said "yes. There are a few rules that we think are stupid and we voted to not enforce them."

Jeff,

Was this particular umpire's name Calvin?

Jeff,

Kinda makes me wonder what his views of the strikezone are...also what other rules they thought were stupid and not to enforce.

Could maybe (barely) understand this logic in a TBall scenario but not a HS tournament.

Hard to teach/coach your kids properly when you run into this.

What kind of balks was he ignoring?

quote:

"Our association thinks that is a stupid rule so we don't call that." I asked him if he felt like as an umpire he had the authority to rewrite the rule book to his desire and he said "yes. There are a few rules that we think are stupid and we voted to not enforce them."

So do they print up their own rule book so coaches / teams know which rules will be ignored? Do they have more tolerance towards coaches / players who want to argue one of the rules they don't enforce?

Absolutely ridiculous.

First off, you all know how wrong this is…..it is not up to the umpires to decide what rules are correct or not. The state body does that. Here is the direction that we received this year on rules.

 Umpires MUST enforce all rules as adopted by the PIAA Board of Directors.
 If umpires do not agree with rules, they still must enforce them as written.
 Umpires SHALL NOT have selective enforcement of what they think the rules should be. Chapters may not make up their own modifications or interpretations.
 There is a formalized process for changing Rules…. follow it.

If an umpire does not agree with a rule set for a level of baseball, then he should not call that level. In the past I’ve talked about the old NFHS rule that had Umpires calling out runners who missed a base WITHOUT an appeal. I never agreed with that as I thought that umpires should not aid the defense……BUT I called it that way until the NFHS repealed that ruling.

There 30 segments of balks in the rules…yet no more than 5 or so are ever called….it’s not that they are ignored it is just how they are interpreted by the umpire that makes the difference….If an umpire called all the technical balks without interpreting the situation/application then it would be the coaches who be saying they never call that in our league…..

This was a dumb statement from the umpire and a dumb move by his association…..an association owes it to its members to provide the education and official interpretations so that the umpire can move forward with confidence.

And then there's the "spirit of the rule" thing...

30 balks?

8.05 lists 13. Add a couple more 8.02 or 8.03 (I don't have my books here)

The only way I've seen any one come up with 30 is by using different examples that violate the same rule, e.g. "Started and Stopped" and the so called "double set" are a violaton of the same rule.

quote:

Originally posted by Jimmy03:

8.05 lists 13. Add a couple more 8.02 or 8.03

Any chance someone could list those 13 or so. That would be interesting to see.

quote:

Originally posted by ironhorse:

quote:

Originally posted by Jimmy03:

8.05 lists 13. Add a couple more 8.02 or 8.03

Any chance someone could list those 13 or so. That would be interesting to see.

Here is the OBR url for the pitcher. 8.02 and 8.05 list the balks. 8.03 doesn't involve balks unless I am missing something.

http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/downloa...s/08_the_pitcher.pdf

quote:

Originally posted by Jimmy03:
30 balks?

8.05 lists 13. Add a couple more 8.02 or 8.03 (I don't have my books here)

The only way I've seen any one come up with 30 is by using different examples that violate the same rule, e.g. "Started and Stopped" and the so called "double set" are a violaton of the same rule.

Jimmy is correct, my assertion of 30 segments, roughly equates to 30 or so applications of the balk rules which are most often violations of the same balk rule....