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| SOFTBALL LINKS |
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Put The Rules Online, Now!!
by Dave
Monday, June 15, 2009
There are a couple rule changes which have come to my attention. Here they are with the reasons I was interested in them.
I) Pitching Arm Rotations
A reader wrote in to ask about a pitching rule change which effected a girl she saw pitching in a Pony qualifier. The rule at issue involves limiting a pitcher to, as she said, "a maximum of one and a half clockwise revolutions." She noted that the motion was picked up by the umps who explained it to the pitcher and coach but allowed her to finish the inning.
I had not read or otherwise heard about this change so I went online to look. I was able to find reference to the new one and a half circle rule with respect to the National Federation of High Schools (NFHS) but, while Pony publishes its rule changes online, I do not have a current Pony rulebook so I cannot verify what the rule is. My understanding is the Pony rule prohibits "two revolutions."
I have to tell you that I find it annoying that all the large sanctioning bodies do not simply publish their rulebooks online. I've said it before and I know I will say it again but this is absurd. The year is 2009. Almost anything important can be found online. But Pony and most other organizations still do not publish their rules on their web sites.
Someone once suggested that perhaps sales of rulebooks are a money raiser for some organizations. OK. Pony charges $1.50 for a copy of its rules. Just how much could they possibly raise after costs of printing, packaging, etc.? They could hold a one day bake sale at one of their national tournaments and make the same amount. Some organizations charge more but I cannot imagine anyone is getting rich off the rulebook business.
Maybe it would cost too much to convert the book to an online version and then to keep it on a server. Anyone who tells you that does not know how modern books are published. They also do not understand how little web server space actually costs. The fact is there is no reason any organization would keep its rulebook offline unless it affirmateively wanted to keep the rulebook out of the hands of others. That's not a very good reason since anyone could have, for example, Pony's rulebook for a buck fifty. There is no good reason why all these organizations, Little League, Babe Ruth, Pony, FAST, USSSA, NSA, ASA don't all have their rulebooks available online. Lest I confuse anyone, of course, some groups, like NSA, actually do put their rulebook online.
In any event, I was not able to locate any Pony rule change for 2009 which referred to the NFHS change language. I don't recall such a change for 2008. So I have to assume the older rules are still valid. My 2007 Pony rulebook contains a prohibition against "two revolutions."
The high school rule change is here. It reads in relevant part:
"Change the pitching windup requirement to a maximum of one and a half clockwise
revolutions.
ART. 4 The pitcher may use any windup desired provided:
d. the pitcher does not make more than one and a half clockwise revolutions of the arm in the windmill pitch.
...
The ball does not have to be released the first time past the hip.
...
Rationale: More and more pitchers are pushing the rule to the limit in an attempt to gain an advantage by deceiving the batter. The change will make an illegal pitch easier to identify and enforcement more consistent."
Making enforcement consistent is a nice objective. Yet it almost never happens. We have seen some blatant sorts of illegalities committed by pitchers in high school for several years. Possibly the most common one occurs when the pitcher takes a little teeny-tiny step forward with her pivot foot, off the rubber, just like you-know-who does in international play. Another common prohibited pitching motion involves the archetypical crow-hop where a leap is followed by obtaining a new point of impetus. Leaps are less frequently seen but do happen. The leap, where the pivot foot becomes airborn before ball release rather than dragging away from the rubber is not my favorite call. The reason I don't like it is it is often precipitated by poor pitching area conditions. It's not the pitcher's fault.
This brings me to a story I want to tell but wasn't sure where or how to bring it up. This year a coach was awarded conference coach of the year by a local newspaper. That paper, of course, published an article explaining its choice. The sited a game in the earlier rounds of the conference tournament. I have a problem with that because I saw the game.
Due to rainy weather, the game had to be played at night. The host team, the higher seed, had it moved to a local recreational complex. The field on which it was played was a LL baseball field, complete with grass infield and a smallish mound. The pitching rubber was up on a hill and the conditions around it were poor. To me the game should not have been played on a baseball field. To me, the pitching circle conditions were illegal and unacceptable. yet I suspect that the coach of the year picked the field not merely because it had lights, if you know what I mean.
During the course of the game, the coach of the year twisted up the umps and complained about illegal pitches. The opposing pitcher was obviously struggling with the subpar pitching area. Finally the umps called an illegal pitch on her. That was with the first runner to reach third base. That as all the offensive "production" the coach of the year's team needed. The winning run scored on an illegal pitch called with a runner on third, such pitch being caused by the winning coach's choice of illegal pitching area on a baseball diamond, a field unsuitable for softball play, not to mention his badgering of the umps for the pitcher's difficulty acclimating to the illegal pitching area. ABSURD!
To go a little further, it is interesting to me that the person who wrote to me also included photographs of the motion which was called illegal. After reviewing the rule change as well as the motivation behind it, it is clear to me that this girl's motion offended neither the spirit nor the letter of the rule. The umps were quite wrong. Further, they were enforcing an NFHS rule in a Pony game. I understand that this can happen but it is a bit ridiculous.
But that's enough of that.
II) Pitcher's glove
My daughter got a little annoyed because her coach took a permanet marker and colored in the insignia on her glove. The coach told me he had done this because the ump had complained to him and I pretty much ignored it. The problem was the insignia, a very small item, was "optical" yellow in color.
I understand that umps can sometimes make up rules and require them to be adhered to. I've seen this done many times before. I figured that's what happened and who cares anyway. I'm not big on things like this. My daughter would just have to learn to live with it.
I was a little annoyed since this glove was purchased fairly recently and I had no idea why the ump had complained. But in researching other potentially bigger changes, I discovered something on Pony's site. For 2009, they made one rule change which would necessitate the umpire's action. That change reads:
"Page 24 Gloves/Mitts
Rule 3 Add: Optic yellow to the circle colors not allowed on gloves"
Another change I noted was:
"Rule 3 Added: A pitcher shall not wear any item on the pitching hand,
Sec 11 wrist, arm or thigh, which may be distracting to the batter."
I get both of these but had heard nothing of them just as I had not heard of the NFHS pitching revolutions change. I am most likely to blame for not keeping abreast. I'm usually pretty good about these sorts of things. But it does strike me that these organizations are not doing a great job of getting the word out to the softball public.
One of the leading principles of our system of government in this coountry is a concept which has been with us since the beginning. It says ignorance of the law is no excuse. That's rich! In this day and age, almost everyone is ignorant of some laws.
Recently I heard someone talking about a change to the booster seat requirement in my state. I went hunting for it but found nothing. I did find one interesting item however. A police department had this to say about the state's existing law:
Boosters are required for "passengers who are younger than 8 and weigh less than 80 pounds." The only problem is, that's not how the law reads!
The law says "passengers who are younger than 8 or weigh less than 80 pounds." (emphasis my own) There's quite a difference between the two. In one case, the actual laws tells you that if your child is very small for his or her age, say 75 pounds at age 16, she has to be seated in a booster seat! Try to enforce that one with your 16U slap hitting speedster!! But no worries mate, the cops won't enforce it either since they apparently have it wrong!!!
Ignorance of the law is no excuse!
We are coming perilously close to anarchy in this society. It matters not how many laws there are, nor how specific those laws are, when the body of knowledge is too large for anyone to possibly retain, let alone understand, let alone keep up with changes to. We all need a little help and the news outlets, well the news outlets do a poor job of reporting actual facts. They are far too interested in pushing their own agendas. But enough of reality, let's get back to softball.
Softball rules are not all that difficult to understand, I guess. But you really need to study them to have a full understanding. For instance, a few weeks ago, I pointed out that a batter-baserunner who stops while running to first in order to prevent or delay a tag can be called out if she takes a step backwards to slow or impede the fielder from tagging her. This is very impotant since, the ball is dead and runners must return to the last base occupied before the pitch. If you hit a ball to the 1B while your baserunner races home from third, the last thing you want to see is the batter-baserunner stop and take a step backwards. If that happens, all runners return to their previous base, before the pitch.
That's simple enough. I checked out the rule, digested it, let you know what's going on and went on my merry way. I haven't seen that play since, nor any discussion of it except the next night in the WCWS when it was briefly mentioned. But in my kids' games we had a somewhat similar play develop with a runner who was already at first and a grounder hit to the 2B.
I told the team coaches about the rule but I had not thought the whole thing through. I got it wrong. It only applies to a batter-baserunner and the commentary speficially talks about running towards first. The same is not true of a runner at first heading for second, and for good cause. If the fielder were to throw to first, the baserunner would no longer be forced and could return to first (with liability to be put out along the way). The same is not true of a batter baserunner who, quite obviously, cannot return to home.
This just goes to show you that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. I misinterpreted the rule to include a prohibition of backward steop by any forced runner. That is, of course, not the case. You have to be careful in understanding the rules of the game.
My point is really only that in a world as filled with rules as ours is, it becomes more imperative for organizations such as NFHS, Pony, ASA, Little League, etc. to make a greater effort to let us all know what the rules and rule changes are. We shouldn't find out via casual conversations with umpires or in pregame meetings. It should be patently obvious to anyone who plays the game that "optic" insignia are no longer allowed, that pitchers cannot make two and a half circles, that smallish 17 year old sons do not have to be placed in car seats on the way to be dropped off at the Marine Corps recruiting station.
We nbeed the rules online now. We need to have all rule changes distributed out to the playing public as well as umpires. Umpires should know that they must apply the rules for the type of game they are calling, not cross apply rules from one body to another's game. Cops should double check their written work, particularly interpretations of laws, before they send it out to the public or put something online!
To all you softball sanctioning bodies, put the darn rules, the actual darn rules, online!Labels: rules
 
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