Replacematt

Yes. Let's think of an example... R1, 1 out, fly ball to left field. R1, thinking there are 2 out, takes off. Upon reaching 2B, they realize their error and rush back to 1B, reaching the base at the same time as the ball, which F3 mishandles. R1 slides, misses 1B, and ends up in foul territory as the ball ends up at the wall. R1 gets up, touches 1B, and advances to 2B safely. The last touch of 1B is sufficient to correct the miss on the slide.

There are two things at play with this rule: Awarding more than one base from their starting position requires the decision to be "obvious." The default is runners are placed at the base last legally touched at the time of the call.

I disagree with this. The ball came up with the mitt, and the salient point is that no one else is going to have a better look at it than U1. The only question, to me, is when the possession ended and under what circumstances. Unless something drastically changes with the quality of review, there will never be a time where there is a suggestion/mandate to bypass the crew consultation and go directly to review. There are too many elements and observations to be considered to do so, and those should be taken into account for the final call on the field, at which time someone can choose to go to review. Let's take something that is often a crew chief's review--malicious contact. Whether called on the field or not, the crew is going to consult, the appropriate umpire will make a call, and then we will go immediately to review. We want the highest-quality call on the field, not just to have the highest likelihood of not being overturned, but to be informative for review, and the highest probability of being correct if review fails for some reason. If we have a question that can be addressed by crew consultation, we say F*#K it and go right to review, and review isn't working for some reason, we now are making a call based solely on the calling umpire who felt that they possibly missed something.

This isn't a play where U1 should be going to a crew review. They were in position. I assume the call was that there was secure possession (albeit briefly.) There is not a person on that crew that will have information to change that judgment. I have a prime example of this from a conference I work, where U1 called an out, went for help upon request from OC on something (I think it was a pulled foot,) another umpire was "100% sure" the fielder was off the bag, they flip it, DC asks for video review, which confirmed U1's original call. Credibility shot all around. Get your own calls when you have the best look, and let them use the video as a tool. Was that what happened, or was it (more likely) a rules confirmation as to how to place them? By rule, we cannot award more than one base unless we are certain a runner would have achieved that base (or if it's required by some other rule.)

Huh?

The way it's described, it's a foul ball. It's going to be a hell of a conversation with the OC if that's what you called, so be prepared in what you're going to say so you can do it calmly and confidently.

The answer I gave is the professional interpretation, per Wendelstedt.

For OBR and NCAA... The tag is irrelevant. If BR does not advance to 1B within a reasonable time, then they are declared out. All runners still are awarded their next base.

I'm thinking of that video from Texas from what, ten years ago when U1 kicked dirt on the plate while a runner was on his way to score. Some traditions have no place now.

This is why we don't tell players what to do outside of topics involving conduct. It's not our job to tell him to throw the ball back. If he wants to argue the balk, we have tools. If he wants to sit on the ball and not do anything with it, we have tools.

An out for an ejected player is asinine. The purpose of an ejection is to isolate the penalty to that participant (lower-order effects notwithstanding.) It's to avoid direct impact on the game being played. The rationale of punishing the team for an individual's actions is even more ludicrous. It's borderline sadistic as peer pressure can't be done after the fact and expecting kids to police their peers is not feasible, foremost because kids are impulsive and things like this happen regardless of whatever "pressure" they may feel from peers, and also because they don't grasp causality to the degree needed to associate behaviors with ejections--they do not have the executive functioning to do that until well into their teens.

That is exactly how I described it.

To be clear, we have to have a rule basis for it. There's no such thing as "not controlling your team." NCAA is particular about who is ejected, when, and for what--there isn't a provision in 2-26 or 5-15 to eject a coach for the behavior of players other than what we used. Case in point, from this year's test--F2 puts a foreign substance on the ball, F1 delivers it. Who is ejected?

I umpire in a place that is FAR worse for weather in the spring. I almost never wear a jacket on the plate. They're not good for it. It's either cold enough for a coat, or in-between for long sleeves. Jackets don't breathe well and compound the stickiness of having insulation strapped to your chest. (Plus, I think they look like absolute SH*# on the plate. If you're thin, you look like a tall black lollipop, and if you aren't, you look like an engorged tick.) If you ever see me with a jacket on the plate, it's a sign that we are not getting that game in, because I will only wear one for protection from heavy precipitation. Now, that is for me and me alone, and I would not say/influence anyone else to follow what I do. I just had a thought. If someone were to make a plate jacket, with side pockets large enough for baseballs, so that it could stay untucked, that would look infinitely better than tucked with ball bags.

I chose the word relatively for this reason. It's a specific act that's been called out with some semblance of guidelines. Far more so than just "unsportsmanlike words or actions directed at an opponent or umpire." At least we have absolute ejections for some criteria, and the notice is on that ejections can happen for others. Nothing will ever be 100% consistent because no two situations will ever be exactly the same, plus we're human.

In the micro, they are, such as my example. It happened, warning, no more. And those are the ones you don't see. I don't know if hammering only a few would change things. It would need to be something relatively defined, consistent, and enforced across the board, like bat flips or props.

It's been 30 years since I've done LL...wasn't this covered in the RIM?

So, this isn't the one I was remembering. And I would agree with ejection here because of the totality of it--this is threatening a fight. Being a mouthy asshole in passing isn't quite on that level.

Nope, I'm not...I'm not in that area of the country. Food for thought...if that is the clip I'm thinking of, there was no ejection there. There was no ejection in the OP. And I have seen plenty of things (in person and recorded) of players saying things like this to others with no time off for their efforts. Ejection in any of these cases could be supported by rule. But it doesn't have to be THE tool, and I disagree (and apparently, so do others by virtue of action) with the idea that this is an immediate ejection. Besides...isn't at least one of these examples from their conferences, or am I misremembering? In the end, if the behavior stops, the chosen tool worked. If it didn't, then the next one should. And of course context matters. Tossing a batter or pitcher in March isn't going to get on the radar the way it will in May and beyond.

I think it's been made very clear that warnings are to be the first step before almost any ejection. However, if you are saying it is confusing, maybe it hasn't been made clear. The few exceptions fall under, for example, personal comments directed at an umpire, slurs directed at anyone, or physically violent acts. I would also mention this...issuing warnings isn't saying that something is acceptable; if we equate unacceptable=ejection, then we've created a corridor of all-or-nothing thinking where we are either not going to take action until it's too late, or take action that is too severe too early. We have scalpels, we have hammers, we have earplugs, and we have bullhorns. Lots of tools at our disposal.

We issued a bench warning for USC and jockeying--and made it clear to the whole roster that any word, any, directed to the other team put them at risk of ejection and missing the next game (if they got there.) We chose both to give us the option to toss the HC if we got to a second ejection. It did mitigate the situation. I think making them aware of the consequences did more to do so than just warning them, especially for the seniors.

Correct. This was an NCAA conference tournament.

We had this situation in our conference tournament last week. When we got together to discuss our plan for dealing with it, we never discussed ejection as an option nor even thought about it. It's not the penalty that the collective wants for this.

I don't see something that needs to be corrected here. The outcome would be the same regardless of the call. What would be the argument for correcting it?

Overthinking leads to overcalling. Overcalling leads to arguments. Arguments lead to ejections. Ejections lead to reports. If you have an attempt, you do. If you don't, you don't.