MSPChris

So you got this call after the EJ'd assistant poked you in the chest? You should have never called off those people who wanted to call the cops. You're doing a game in an 11U league, and some assistant coach goes Billy Martin on me? he better hope he has bail money. Had this discussion on another forum, but sometimes you gotta call the cops. The league can't ignore it when his name shows up in the local paper's police report. <rant> Fewer and fewer of these "travel leagues" stand up for the umpires. These "travel leagues" are profit centers for so-called "youth sports associations". There are a couple of them where I live. They are thinly disguised companies that sell insurance to leagues and "just happen" to run travel leagues where teams pay big bucks to play. If a coach gets tossed and he has juice in a local association, they call the travel league and hint that their 10 teams just might find another travel league next season. Does the travel league tell the association to dump the jackass coach? Or, do the tell the umpires to STFU and quit tossing coaches. So dleavitt, tell us now what you think happens? </rant>

Well if he's sitting in the dugout, he would see balls on the right and strikes on the left. Maybe someone could draw a picture to help our coach friend...

Hmm.. I dunno... "TIME" ? Could be that the call of "dead ball" caused some of the confusion. Call "TIME", get your legs back, and then assign the runners.

I started to laugh when I read this -- because it confirmed for me my *extreme* distaste for umpiring younger games. I love the kids, I umpire U16 and U19 but I coach my 8-year-old's team and love it. (not a traveling team, BTW). I used to umpire for U12 but I stopped because I got so sick of the coaches and parents. I was going to rant for a little bit, but I'm sure that every umpire reading this knows exactly what I mean. So, Jax -- hats off to you for doing these games.

From the OP. what I "see" is this: 1) Pitcher in the stretch 2) Pitcher stands up, shortens his stride, and stops At that point, he's SET. if he does anything other than pitch, throw to a base, or step off, you have to call the balk. From OP, it sounds like after 2), pitcher brought his hands together and stopped again. that's a balk, and you have to call it. One poster said, (paraphrasing) that it's hard to see any intent or any deception there, so you shouldn't be too picky. That's a bad habit to fall into -- you don't call it and the next umpire does because it's a balk and now the next umpire has to clean up after you because F1 and HC want to know why it's a balk now when "that's been his motion all year, blue." The next umpire gets all the grief because you didn't enforce the rule...

I think that's the point of the question. Since the AC was at the plate meeting, he's the manager until HC shows up. So be glad you didn't dump him "because he was the AC and arguing".

Since we're already complaining about the bump on this thread, I'll chime in sure. I thought it was hilarious. I've never seen an MLB player do that to an umpire, but that it was Ichiro who had never been EJ'd just made it funny to me. Ichiro's one of my favorite players -- if he played his whole career in MLB we'd mention him in the same breath as Cobb, Gehrig, Ripken, Mantle, et al