Hidden Ball Trick - Oops!

[grayhawk]

Little League Juniors TOC game on Saturday. 3 man mechanics - U1 is pretty inexperienced. Visiting team is losing by 8 runs in the Bottom of the 3rd inning. Home team just got a base hit so we have R1. F1 is on the rubber looking in and then steps off. F2, who is hearing impaired, stands up and looks back at me and points down to first. I see F3 with the ball and there has been no call that I know of from U1. U3 is walking in from C toward the mound and starts to ask VC why his pitcher is on the rubber without the ball. I take a more direct approach and call time, call the balk, and award R1 second base.

VC has that wide-eyed "what did we do wrong?" look. I inform him that straddling the rubber without the ball is a balk. He says he didn't know that and we move on. Later, he tried to give me some lineup changes and it took him almost 2 minutes to figure it all out. He tried several times to put two guys into the same position in the batting order while I am letting him know that he can't do that. He finally figured out, with some guidance, to just re-enter his starters in their original positions.

Also, his starting F1 made no less than 25 pickoff attempts during his time on the mound. Not a single attempt was anywhere close to getting an out, and he threw to all three bases at one point or another.