ShmuelGoldstein

Wow. Another example of where I should be careful. I did not find this anywhere in OBR. Maybe I missed it. BUT it is written in black and white in the ISF sb rules, FWIW. I trained in sb, and so this seems to be another example of a nuance that sb has, and bb does not have. R1 and R2 should *not* have been returned. The ball should have remained live in any event. But it doesn't make sense to not call the BR out, even in bb. I can't find a rule that let's us do it gracefully - it's just common sense.

Interesting replies, here. Wow. I umpire in Israel (yes!), and actually softball here is more developed than baseball. The FP umpires here are, IMO, of a higher quality and trained better than the baseball umpires. But that's because baseball for years here had been only a kids sport, and only recently has expanded into High School level and adult level. So, I'm sure things will change. I umpire baseball (and almost no softball anymore) for a very simple reason: the baseball games are at more convenient times than the softball games, that's all. But also, at least here, the baseball players are better behaved than the softball players. That's not to say the sb players are jerks, it's just that asserting my authority as an umpire on the bb field is easier than it is on the sb field.