Unseen ball flight

[Guest Kenny Bond]

High School Baseball (NFHS).

Incident happened at twilight, poor lighting at field.  I'm behind the plate and a fly ball is hit.  I lost sight of the ball. So did EVERYONE else, including both coaches AND the left fielder.  Ball is found over the outfield fence by the left fielder, who indicates it should be a home run.  I can't tell if the ball was fair or foul.

What's the call?

[SH0102]

10 minutes ago, Guest Kenny Bond said:

High School Baseball (NFHS).

Incident happened at twilight, poor lighting at field.  I'm behind the plate and a fly ball is hit.  I lost sight of the ball. So did EVERYONE else, including both coaches AND the left fielder.  Ball is found over the outfield fence by the left fielder, who indicates it should be a home run.  I can't tell if the ball was fair or foul.

What's the call?

Well if the defense is telling you it was a home run, who are you to argue?

was the ball even close to or in foul territory when it was found?  I mean, if it was “found” in fair territory, that’s a HR.  I’m assuming if it bounced in the field of play, you’d be able to have seen it.  If not, you prob should have already ended the game due to darkness.

The only two questions here are:

1) Fair/Foul?  
2) Over the fence in flight or bounced over?

Again, in all honesty, if you lost the ball such that you have no idea how it ended up where it ended up, you probably shouldn’t be playing...bc the outfielders are looking at that ball from similar distance every pitch.

But if you truly lost it, and the ball is now over the fence in fair territory, that’s a home run, especially when the defense isn’t even arguing it bounced, it clearly didn’t then

[beerguy55]

If the outfielder is telling you he SAW it go over the fence, then, sure, I guess that's a piece of information at your disposal to determine if it's a homerun or not...but it doesn't sound like that's the case...it sounds like he found the ball...otherwise, it may have gone over foul, hit something and ended up looking "fair"..or it may have bounced over.   Or it might not even be the ball the batter hit.

If you as the ump never saw it, never saw it land, never saw it come to rest, and there's no other information to help you, I think you could call "no pitch".

No matter what you ultimately determine - HR, double, foul ball, no pitch -  I think your next immediate move is suspending the game due to darkness.

[Replacematt]

1 hour ago, beerguy55 said:

If you as the ump never saw it, never saw it land, never saw it come to rest, and there's no other information to help you, I think you could call "no pitch".

Nope. 

[aaluck]

6 minutes ago, Matt said:

Nope. 

Well you have to call something.

[Replacematt]

1 minute ago, aaluck said:

Well you have to call something.

Exactly. Call it something, not pretend it didn't happen.

[agdz59]

What's the call?  Whatever PU says it is.  You are King.  And it is good to be King.

And your partner was no help?  They should have been initially tracking the ball and could hopefully provide a clue.  If the sun's in your eyes, it shouldn't have been in theirs.

Like someone else said, if the defender is telling you it's a home run, I'd take that.   

If everyone on the field is looking around like you say and all I saw was sunlight down the line (I have many fields like that but haven't yet had this happen), I'm going to call foul ball and live with those consequences rather than calling it fair which leaves open the question ground rule double or home run?  Just less mess to clean up if you call foul, IMO.

[aaluck]

10 minutes ago, agdz59 said:

Like someone else said, if the defender is telling you it's a home run, I'd take that.   

That's my call as well.  I'm not sure about other states but here all playoff games are three man crews, championships have six man. To me if it's that dark every hit fly ball to the outfield is a trouble ball and someone should have been going out with it.

3 hours ago, Guest Kenny Bond said:

Incident happened at twilight, poor lighting at field

...never had a field with lights that bad and I've seen BAD!

[noumpere]

51 minutes ago, Matt said:

Nope. 

Agreed -- newer (and some other) umpires tend to default to a "do over" in many tricky situations, but that's (almost) never the right answer.

[Guest Kenny Bond]

7 minutes ago, aaluck said:

That's my call as well.  I'm not sure about other states but here all playoff games are three man crews, championships have six man. To me if it's that dark every hit fly ball to the outfield is a trouble ball and someone should have been going out with it.

...never had a field with lights that bad and I've seen BAD!

I called home run because of the indication of the left fielder.  We were doing a two man crew, and my partner was watching the touch of the batter-runner at first base so he didn't see it.

And yes, the lights at this field are BAD!!

[beerguy55]

1 hour ago, Matt said:

Nope. 

Don't get me wrong...I hate the answer, and I don't suggest it lightly...in fact, I do so while holding my nose...BUT...outside the OF'er saying "hey, I found it...looks like a HR" you have NOTHING to go on.   NOBODY saw it cross the fence, nobody saw or heard it land.   You have A ball sitting on the other side of the HR fence which may or may not be the ball the batter hit, may or may not have bounced over, may or may not have landed/crossed fair.  Now, if the OF'er says that he saw it land...or heard it land and saw it come to rest, or gave some other indication he's pretty sure there was no ball there before and that it's a HR (and kudos to him for his honesty and sporstmanship), then, yeah, nothing wrong with an HR call.

If nobody finds the ball (say the field is surrounded by bushes and tall grass), or if OF keeps his mouth shout, then what...I guess it's foul?  Don't get me wrong, I could live with that too, but it stinks just as much as "do over" (and with two strikes, it's an easy way to get a do over without calling one).    I could live with any of the calls...I don't think any of them are inherently worse/better.

Now, I have a big condition to my line of thinking - there's a difference between a ball you COULD not see, and a ball you did not see, but should have.  No, we don't want an ump calling "do over" every time he blinked, or lost focus, or gapped out thinking about the hot mom keeping score.  And, in reality, darkness is the only scenario where this would happen as described.  Anything else, like sun in your eyes, is temporary, and you and others would see the ball come out the other side, and you can make some reasonable deductions.  Darkness (or sudden onset blindness, or some medical condition) is the only situation where you don't see anything, and you're left with just a guess...even if you're comfortable about it's probability. 

In those scenarios, yeah, I can live with "it never happened...and btw, we're stopping the game")...as a coach, as a player, as a spectator, as a tournament director, as a league executive...so, why not as an ump?

[Rich Ives]

4 hours ago, aaluck said:

That's my call as well.  I'm not sure about other states but here all playoff games are three man crews, championships have six man. To me if it's that dark every hit fly ball to the outfield is a trouble ball and someone should have been going out with it.

...never had a field with lights that bad and I've seen BAD!

I've been at a couple of LL fields where, at night, normally in-play fly balls could disappear into the night sky.

[maven]

The best thing to do would be to go back in time and call the game on account of darkness before crap like this happens. There's a perfectly sensible reason the rules provide for calling a game, and it becomes evident in situations like this one.

I need to make up a name for this kind of question: "the umpire screwed up mechanics/rules, what's the correct call?" 

[Replacematt]

3 hours ago, beerguy55 said:

Don't get me wrong...I hate the answer, and I don't suggest it lightly...in fact, I do so while holding my nose...BUT...outside the OF'er saying "hey, I found it...looks like a HR" you have NOTHING to go on.   NOBODY saw it cross the fence, nobody saw or heard it land.   You have A ball sitting on the other side of the HR fence which may or may not be the ball the batter hit, may or may not have bounced over, may or may not have landed/crossed fair.  Now, if the OF'er says that he saw it land...or heard it land and saw it come to rest, or gave some other indication he's pretty sure there was no ball there before and that it's a HR (and kudos to him for his honesty and sporstmanship), then, yeah, nothing wrong with an HR call.

If nobody finds the ball (say the field is surrounded by bushes and tall grass), or if OF keeps his mouth shout, then what...I guess it's foul?  Don't get me wrong, I could live with that too, but it stinks just as much as "do over" (and with two strikes, it's an easy way to get a do over without calling one).    I could live with any of the calls...I don't think any of them are inherently worse/better.

Now, I have a big condition to my line of thinking - there's a difference between a ball you COULD not see, and a ball you did not see, but should have.  No, we don't want an ump calling "do over" every time he blinked, or lost focus, or gapped out thinking about the hot mom keeping score.  And, in reality, darkness is the only scenario where this would happen as described.  Anything else, like sun in your eyes, is temporary, and you and others would see the ball come out the other side, and you can make some reasonable deductions.  Darkness (or sudden onset blindness, or some medical condition) is the only situation where you don't see anything, and you're left with just a guess...even if you're comfortable about it's probability. 

In those scenarios, yeah, I can live with "it never happened...and btw, we're stopping the game")...as a coach, as a player, as a spectator, as a tournament director, as a league executive...so, why not as an ump?

There's no rules basis for doing it over. Maybe you'll have chill coaches, but one of the umpire's worst enemies is trying to make things right in a manner unsupported by the rules. That would be a valid argument from the coach on the losing end, and a valid protest (if allowed.) It's really no different than a play at a base being obscured by a cloud of dust--you still have to call one of the options.

[beerguy55]

3 minutes ago, Matt said:

There's no rules basis for doing it over. Maybe you'll have chill coaches, but one of the umpire's worst enemies is trying to make things right in a manner unsupported by the rules. That would be a valid argument from the coach on the losing end, and a valid protest (if allowed.) It's really no different than a play at a base being obscured by a cloud of dust--you still have to call one of the options.

I see your point, really...I just think "God Rule" could be invoked here as a scenario not specifically addressed to give you cover under the rules - ie. nobody saw the ball after it hit the bat...nobody saw where it went, or where it landed...the ball was found but provenance was uncertain...or in an extreme case, nobody ever found the ball"...this seems to be a scenario that should have been avoided by stopping play about 15 minutes before the event occurred, making it unusual again...it's not in the rule book because we expect umpires to stop the game before it gets this far...

 

Your cloud of dust is a little different...you can at least rule that you never saw a tag...or wait until the dust settles...

[Replacematt]

6 minutes ago, beerguy55 said:

I see your point, really...I just think "God Rule" could be invoked here as a scenario not specifically addressed to give you cover under the rules - ie. nobody saw the ball after it hit the bat...nobody saw where it went, or where it landed...the ball was found but provenance was uncertain...or in an extreme case, nobody ever found the ball"...this seems to be a scenario that should have been avoided by stopping play about 15 minutes before the event occurred, making it unusual again...it's not in the rule book because we expect umpires to stop the game before it gets this far...

 

Your cloud of dust is a little different...you can at least rule that you never saw a tag...or wait until the dust settles...

The thing is that this is covered in the rules, so playing God isn't available and runs the risk of making things much worse. Make the call, deal with it being right or wrong (not that anyone is going to have a leg to stand on if they complain,) and that's that.

And in this play, I can rule I never saw it go foul and call it a homerun. (The dust settling does nothing when the tag, base, and runner are all in the middle of it.)