scrounge

I just give my best Porky Pig impression and say "Th-Th-The, Th-Th-The, Th-Th... That's all, folks!" Is that wrong?

hmm, that makes this a little more 'spammy' if true

Not quite a POE, but they changed to wording to make the rule book in alignment with the long-standing case book play.

I was caught In the middle of a heated rules post I looked round And I knew, knew I was toast My mind raced And I thought what could I do And I knew There was no help, no help from you Sound of the drums Beating in my heart The thunder of guns Tore me apart You've been Mavenstruck

That is not exactly what are the NOAA guidelines. They state that if you can hear thunder, you're generally within 6-10 miles - which is approx what the 30-30 shortcut/rule of thumb is measuring. This is what the NOAA says is the zone of significant risk. BY NO MEANS ARE YOU SAFE OTHERWISE!!! It's not an on/off switch, the risk may be lower but it's by no means trivial at 11 or 14 miles. Strikes, admittedly rare, have been known up to 20 miles. This is where the term 'bolt out of the blue' came from - far-off lightning strikes from a storm even though it's blue skies at the strike location. Overall, though, I applaud your philosophy on taking caution and following the 30 minute rule. I would just caution any false sense of safety if you "only" get to 35 seconds of flash to bang. If you can hear it AT ALL...you're in danger. And except for dark at night when you can see 50 miles away - if you can see it you probably are as well.

I think it's just the number of times people have hit the 'Like this' button on your posts.

No. There isn't.

Uber for Umpires! I didn't check it out in depth, but in theory it's intriguing, but not sure in practice. Will coaches just pick the same good ole boys they always get? First come first serve? Will umps start (increase) solicitation? In TX high school football, coaches essentially pick the refs. I'd rather not adopt that model, even with a tech boost.

Well, when I opened it up in youtube, it said it had 139,927 views, so yes....someone has seen it. Asked and answered, counselor!

I would agree with you, it's certainly not required to appeal to the correct umpire, just that they may have squeaked by in the most shakiest of sense that they did allow an appeal (sort of) and an umpire made a ruling on it (horribly, given that he had no knowledge and shouldn't have ruled at all). It is incorrect to say the coach did not correctly appeal. As you mentioned, I hope and pray that no one from my group handled it in this way.

dude wants to play with fire by hotdogging like this, dude gonna get burned....you did him a favor, but only time will tell if he embraces the lesson

Welcome, fellow Central Ohio colleague....let me know if I can help in any way.

If all you do is signal a strike and say nothing, the infielders and your partner may have no idea if it was caught or uncaught. Of course, the majority of obvious catch/no catch situations will be fine - but what about those in between? Unless you're saying "batter's out" for every caught 3rd strike, how will they know? The batter and catcher are the two who *most* need to know. They're by no means the *only* ones who need to know.

Make a "safe" signal with the arms and - more importantly - say "NO CATCH". Remember, the two people who most need to know, the batter and catcher, are facing away from you.

Dude, I don't mean this snarkily at all, but you're tilting at windmills here. Also, except for that little shelf, the scoreboard doesn't look inside at all (or if it is, just barely) but rather above it. It's commonplace for things like that to be over the wall and considered out. Heck, it's commonplace for things even over and inside the wall to be defined as out by ground rule. Witness the baskets at Wrigley Field - they're actually UNDER the top of the fence. It's still a HR.

waste....of....time. It's like the 4 pitch IBB, so much sound and fury over a complete nothingburger that no one will miss once it's gone.

Because it's a useless Kabuki theater. The point is the appeal, did the runner mess up or not. Just get on with it.

Scoreboard looks like it's above/behind the wall to me, only possible issue looks like that shelf IF you insist on going there. I wouldn't.

Hypertechnically and in the most pedantic sense, yes the coach did not correctly appeal but this wasn't handled properly in the slightest. The BU shouldn't have called the runner safe or made a ruling at all...as he stated, he wasn't even watching the runner on 3rd (nor should he have been). All it would have taken was a quick "Let's go ask <insert PU's name>". Or the PU could slowly walk up and find out what he's asking - he probably knew all along. This unnecessary game of gotcha is a one way ticket to game mgmt hell, for no purpose.

I wish they'd just make it even easier. There's a good, detailed definition of the set position as regards to feet - the pivot foot in full contact with the pitcher's plate and parallel, with the free foot somewhere in front of the line of the front edge extended. Just call everything else that *doesn't* meet that definition the windup. It's far easier to define one thing and then make everything else the other thing than closely define two things and live with this ambiguous in between. Then, if not clearly in the set, no pickoffs without stepping off, no Zaprudering if the free foot is in line with that front edge or an inch beyond, easier to teach and enforce, etc.

If I think it was truly evasive action, I don't care where the bat goes, I'm not calling it a swing. If the batter started to swing and THEN spinned out? Well, then we have a more difficult decision. Did the swing rise to the level of an attempt to strike before the evasive action started? Was he bailing out of a bad swing or just tensing up a little and then ducking out? I know this isn't a terribly satisfactory answer, but I'd want to see if it's one action or two (an attempt and then bail).

There isn't that left fist held out signal anymore, but still make the call as @MidAmUmp described.

I could offer you the central Ohio area as about as close as you're likely to get to that. We're almost exclusively FED-based here, for good or ill (IMO good, but that's another thread to discuss that). Obviously all the school ball is FED, but the largest youth ball org is primarily FED-based with some minor local exceptions, etc. The major tournaments are FED-based, except for a small handful of Nations/USSSA tournaments. If you avoid those - and I do, for many reasons - and don't do MABL/MSBL, it's pretty much all FED. You could do well over 100 games a year and never touch a different rule code.

Totally fine with the call.