ErichKeane

So I had this happen in a 10U NFHS-rule game last night. I called a balk, and the coach wasn't happy about it, but we went on and they didn't try it again. Some dad in the stands went on about 'he never commited to the plate', but I have no idea what he was on about.... Anyway, I was quite sure at the time, but am less sure now that I'm re-looking at the rulebook. RHP comes set. Does a high knee kick, holds it briefly (when R1 takes his secondary), then swings the knee around the front to step towards 1st and throws to the base. He was very clearly moving 'forward' and then stepped over to 1st. I told the coach I had him on balk 2x (once for the pause, once for the moving forward then going to 1st), but the first was a bit of an excuse. The second part is the one I'm less sure about. Thoughts?

I think you'll find that 95% of the time, you are your own harshest critic. I definitely get on myself on every pitch i miss a ball either way on the edges, and get the looks from players/coaches, but still have coaches tell me they love my strike zone.

I have interest in a large or so, but presumably we'd need to get to enough folks interested in that size, assuming you'd be willing to do a handful in that size too.

I thought I saw it quoted above, but NFHS 2-28-5: A feint is a movement which simulates the start of a pitch or a throw to a base and which is used in an attempt to deceive a runner. I realize now that OBR doesn't have a definition of it (and I mis-read the above quote of it). One of my pet-peeves of defining ANYTHING in english is that many sentences have ambiguous parses. I am a member of two standards organizations in computing that both define a programming language with english prose, and much of our time is trying to suss out those ambiguities to clarify intent. Baseball rules obviously do a much worse job of that (and lean HEAVILY on past interpretation publications as a result), and lead to discussions like this. All of this combines to why doing a 'custom' rule set often results in terribleness. It takes language and rule experts to finely craft rules, and even those are horribly ambiguous all the time.

I'm still confused thinking about what @RBIbaseball brought up... there are two ways to parse the rule. "Feinting the throw", meaning "pretend to throw" (in the direction of the base), or "feinting the throw to the base" meaning "pretending to throw to the base" (that is, pretending to throw to the base, but throwing elsewhere). It seems like the latter is what the 'not directly to the base' interp is using, which is inconsistent with the definition of 'feint' in the rules.

Ooof, seeing that after the fact, thats a tough call either way. He was working towards 'struck at' really late into the pitch, with a last-moment 'escaping' from the ball. I'd have called that a swing all day, and I doubt I'd ever see an argument from it. But then, I'm not as good as an MLB ump, despite how much coaches expect me to be.

The case play referred to by @Senor Azul: NFHS 8.3.5 Situation H: R1 is at first when B2 hits to F6, who feints a throw to second and then throws the ball into the dugout. At the time of the throw, R1 has touched second but B2 has not touched first. RULING: Because the feint by F6 is not considered a play, R1 is awarded third base and B2 is awarded second base. The award is based on the positions of R1 and B2 at the time of the pitch. Not sure how relevant? This is for the 'first play by an infielder' to determine awards, but I'm not sure what the impact to this discussion is.

By games, I do primarily OBR. BUT my day job is 'teach computers to be absolute jerks about rules enforcement' (C++ Compiler engineer), so I tend to be a 'letter of the law above all else' type anyway.

Depends on the vagueness of the rule In this case, the "First to 3rd move is illegal" is so sufficiently vague that I'd have a hard time defining it. There is some tea-leaf reading in your example, but to be a 'stickler', I would expect the throw to 1B would be necessary for it to be 'illegal', as in common parlance, the '3rd to 1st move' is commonly understood to be feint to 3rd, throw to 1st. So the 'throw' would be necessary. I'm of course reading 'tea leaves' here too, but its trying to deduce what common parlance for '3rd to 1st move' is. IMO, in BOTH cases, the correct answer is to not umpire under vague/incomplete rules until the TD has publicly clarified the rules. Umpires get a bad enough rap, having to enforce poorly defined and ambiguous rules only makes it worse.

I agree the 3rd-to-1st move is a feint to 3rd, followed by a throw to 1st. The legality of which is severely dependent on the ruleset being applied. I'm hopeful that Pat will discuss his concerns with his TD, who will put SOME thought into the rules and correct them.

To hammer this home: >>Just remember - How can you have 3rd to 1st be illegal, and a feint to 3rd legal when they're the same thing? Anyhow, I've made my point, (I've sure tried) and I'll wait until Pat gets back to us. Because the rule explicitly says that 3rd-to-1st is illegal, it does NOT say the feint to 3rd is illegal. You're hung up on "how can 3rd to 1st be illegal without feint to 3rd being illegal", and the answer is: Because that is what the rule explicitly says. For OPs ruleset, it is specified as "if i fake to 3rd AND THEN go to 1st, that is illegal". Deciding that it means "fake to 3rd is illegal" is applying a different ruleset to the one specified.

ONE bugger is defensible in black and white based on the rules for the tournament. You can say, "But OBR!" all you want, but the response is going to be, "yes, but this is NFHS rules!". I've yet to be in a tourney setting where there ISN'T a protest process. And I've yet to be in one where coaches don't complain to the TD after the game anyway. I don't want to be the umpire that 'makes up rules' for the tourney, I'd rather be the one that stuck to the rules too much.

Oh absolutely. I'm being a bit obstinate here because I have a seething hatred for folks who make up rules without discussing it with rules experts. Additionally, it is NOT our responsibility to figure out what the melon-head writing the rules SHOULD have said, we have to enforce the rules as written. No,I absolutely get what you're saying here. BUT the 3rd-to-1st is illegal because it is a feint to 3rd is illegal in OBR. This tourney in OP is NOT OBR. It is Fed. It has 2 rules that are perhaps OBR inspired, but aren't from OBR. If they said, 'This is NFHS + OBR balk rules', I'd agree with you, but they are doing custom modifications. If they meant "Feint to 3rd is illegal", that is what they need to say, not what they did.

The outcome of that is: You have a TD who is writing the above rule set. When a coach complains about it, the TD is not going to back you up here, so you're going to look like a fool enforcing a made-up rule in a MSU tournament. So I'd either enforce the rule exactly-as-written (3rd to 1st is illegal because 3rd to 1st is illegal, not the feint), or track the TD down in advance and MAKE him clarify the rules.

Agreed, the OPs example is NOT illegal by those rules, is my point. The 3rd to 1st is illegal because it is illegal (yes, a tautology, but its what their rules say!). I guess what I'm saying is, "We shouldn't be reading tea leaves to try to bail out bad rules writers, we need to enforce their rules, and let them deal with the fallout, not us".

That is why it is illegal in OBR. In OPs rule set, its not, it is illegal because it is a 3rd to 1st move.

I quoted the rules they were given by OP later on. It does NOT say it is OBR rules, it just says live-ball and 3rd to 1st not legal. They perhaps WANT something more akin to OBR rules, but thats not what they wrote. Given the above, I can't imagine the arguments I'd get for calling the feint to 3rd as a balk, mixed with a TD that obviously doesn't know enough about how to back me up on it, so thats just not a bugger I'd want to pick.

I find the same. I typically say something like, "I know there is just one of me, but I'm going to get to every call I can so I can make the right call. For the rest, you can blame my partner." They chuckle, and the game starts. First close play at 2nd where I've got my face right in it (usually some kid stretching a single to a double), I get a "nice hustle blue", and don't get any more issues rest of the game.

Oh yeah, thats right, brain fart, sorry about that Ok correct it to: F3 catches it on 1 bounce (getting B/R out because he's just 'there' on the base), but R1 was off on the pitch, and makes to to 2nd before F3 hauls it into the stands trying to make a play on the slower R2. Does R1 score?

I've definitely seen it FWIW. I've had a partner realize he mucked a rule thanks to someone yelling about it (fan, player, coach, etc)and come to me for the opportunity to fix it. I had 1 partner come to me and go, "I know I called out, but I got ahead of myself... he was clearly safe, so I'm going to change it, but I need you to nod your head like you saw something so I can do it."

As he's stepping/coming off the mound, pivot foot comes off the rubber with the body? So the turn to 2nd is 'off' the rubber. I've definitely seen that happen.

2-3 missed calls sounds like a 1/2 decent inning

So this Saturday I worked 60/90 on a field that typically does softball. Except instead of moving the bases out into the grass, this field moves the plate back about 20 feet (moving both foul lines of course), and moves the bases to the side of the grass. It goes... alright. They paint both foul lines correctly, though fans frequently get confused about fair/foul because of it. The REAL gotcha is the area behind home plate is TINY. I typically had to move to allow the next batter to go behind me to get up to bat (for those who didn't want to go between F1 and F2, which is an unwritten rule). So there was maybe 5 feet behind the ump to the fence. Of course, there are parents sitting back there. Because of it, I was overhearing every word of every conversation from the dads behind the plate. "Good eye! Wait, strike? Wasn't that at his shoulders? Looked like it was at his shoulders." "That looked outside from here, didn't it? Yeah, I thought that was outside." and so on Nothing directed at me at all, and everyone was pleasant/etc, but I definitely spent much of the games reminding myself, "None of this is meant for you!". Overall, the 5 games Saturday went really nicely. All coaches/players were great, and I had a fantastic partner. We ended up getting to the 'time limit' in all but our 1st game (no-new-inning-after-2), so there wasn't much in the way of breaks. <side story> The worst was the last game. Before I tell you, I have to point out 1 other 'oddity' of the field. Behind home plate they have a hole in the fence about 12" square, where the scoreboard controller is for softball. We don't have it, so it is just a hole in the fence. We joked about it at plate meetings a few times about how the ball would have to do fancy things to get around the catcher and ump standing there, haha, we jinxed it... Anyway, back to the game: Mercy rule is 12 after 3, 10 after 4, 8 after 5. 14U in the losers bracket. top 1 goes just about 1-2-3, bottom 1 takes AAAAGES. Top 2 goes really quick, bottom 2 takes AAAAGES. We get to the top-3rd, score is 14-0, about 1:10 into the game. Pitcher loses his ability to hit the backstop more than 50% of the time, but finally gets 2 outs, bases loaded, 2 runs in. SO "continue the game" run on 3rd. Swinging strike-3 in the dirt, ball pops under the catcher and ump, and bounces right through the hole, scoring the run. Top of 3rd ends, 14-5, HT scores 1 more to make it 15-5 after 3, so 10 run rule after 4 is now in play... We go into the top of the 4th, VT puts up 1 more in a looong inning again, 15-6. HT only needs 1 run in the bottom to end it, or needs it to take a bit longer, but loads the bases with ZERO OUTS and gets no more. 4th inning ends with 3 minutes left on the clock, so we have to play the 5th. VT ends up being able to put up a few more, making it 15-10, but at least we didn't have to play the home-half thanks to the time limit. Not a great quality game to end the day, and one I kept thinking we were going to get out of! I was bases, and my partner teased me I should have made up a balk or two along the way, I told him he should expanded the strike zone a foot or three along the way.

Thats incorrect on '1st play by the fielder', isn't it? As quoted in OP: "OBR 5.06(b)(4)(G) has "If the throw is the first play by an infielder and the batter-runner has not reached first base when the throw was made, award all runners from time of pitch."." The point of the question here is, "how do we define 'first play by the fielder' for the purposes of 5.06b (4)(G).

Ah, so a melon-head TD. SHOULD be a balk by any sane rule set, but thats not what we have here. So, not a balk