| SOFTBALL TIPS |
|
|
|
| SITE STUFF |
|
|
|
|
ARCHIVES
|
| • |
June 26, 2005 |
| • |
July 03, 2005 |
| • |
July 10, 2005 |
| • |
July 17, 2005 |
| • |
July 24, 2005 |
| • |
July 31, 2005 |
| • |
August 07, 2005 |
| • |
August 14, 2005 |
| • |
August 21, 2005 |
| • |
August 28, 2005 |
| • |
September 11, 2005 |
| • |
October 02, 2005 |
| • |
October 09, 2005 |
| • |
October 23, 2005 |
| • |
October 30, 2005 |
| • |
November 06, 2005 |
| • |
November 13, 2005 |
| • |
December 04, 2005 |
| • |
December 18, 2005 |
| • |
December 25, 2005 |
| • |
January 08, 2006 |
| • |
January 15, 2006 |
| • |
January 29, 2006 |
| • |
February 05, 2006 |
| • |
February 12, 2006 |
| • |
February 19, 2006 |
| • |
February 26, 2006 |
| • |
March 05, 2006 |
| • |
March 12, 2006 |
| • |
March 19, 2006 |
| • |
March 26, 2006 |
| • |
April 02, 2006 |
| • |
April 09, 2006 |
| • |
April 16, 2006 |
| • |
April 23, 2006 |
| • |
April 30, 2006 |
| • |
May 07, 2006 |
| • |
May 14, 2006 |
| • |
May 21, 2006 |
| • |
May 28, 2006 |
| • |
June 04, 2006 |
| • |
June 11, 2006 |
| • |
June 18, 2006 |
| • |
June 25, 2006 |
| • |
July 09, 2006 |
| • |
July 16, 2006 |
| • |
July 23, 2006 |
| • |
July 30, 2006 |
| • |
August 13, 2006 |
| • |
August 20, 2006 |
| • |
September 03, 2006 |
| • |
September 10, 2006 |
| • |
September 17, 2006 |
| • |
September 24, 2006 |
| • |
October 01, 2006 |
| • |
October 08, 2006 |
| • |
October 15, 2006 |
| • |
October 22, 2006 |
| • |
November 12, 2006 |
| • |
November 26, 2006 |
| • |
December 31, 2006 |
| • |
January 14, 2007 |
| • |
January 21, 2007 |
| • |
January 28, 2007 |
| • |
February 04, 2007 |
| • |
February 11, 2007 |
| • |
February 18, 2007 |
| • |
February 25, 2007 |
| • |
March 04, 2007 |
| • |
March 11, 2007 |
| • |
March 18, 2007 |
| • |
April 01, 2007 |
| • |
April 08, 2007 |
| • |
April 15, 2007 |
| • |
April 22, 2007 |
| • |
April 29, 2007 |
| • |
May 06, 2007 |
| • |
May 13, 2007 |
| • |
May 20, 2007 |
| • |
May 27, 2007 |
| • |
June 03, 2007 |
| • |
June 10, 2007 |
| • |
June 17, 2007 |
| • |
June 24, 2007 |
| • |
July 01, 2007 |
| • |
July 22, 2007 |
| • |
July 29, 2007 |
| • |
August 12, 2007 |
| • |
August 19, 2007 |
| • |
September 02, 2007 |
| • |
September 16, 2007 |
| • |
September 30, 2007 |
| • |
October 07, 2007 |
| • |
October 14, 2007 |
| • |
October 21, 2007 |
| • |
November 04, 2007 |
| • |
November 18, 2007 |
| • |
November 25, 2007 |
| • |
December 02, 2007 |
| • |
December 09, 2007 |
| • |
December 16, 2007 |
| • |
January 13, 2008 |
| • |
February 17, 2008 |
| • |
February 24, 2008 |
| • |
March 02, 2008 |
| • |
March 09, 2008 |
| • |
March 30, 2008 |
| • |
April 06, 2008 |
| • |
April 13, 2008 |
| • |
April 20, 2008 |
| • |
April 27, 2008 |
| • |
May 04, 2008 |
| • |
May 11, 2008 |
| • |
May 18, 2008 |
| • |
May 25, 2008 |
| • |
June 01, 2008 |
| • |
June 15, 2008 |
| • |
June 22, 2008 |
| • |
June 29, 2008 |
| • |
July 06, 2008 |
| • |
July 13, 2008 |
| • |
July 20, 2008 |
| • |
August 03, 2008 |
| • |
August 10, 2008 |
| • |
August 17, 2008 |
| • |
August 24, 2008 |
| • |
August 31, 2008 |
| • |
September 07, 2008 |
| • |
September 14, 2008 |
| • |
September 21, 2008 |
| • |
September 28, 2008 |
| • |
October 05, 2008 |
| • |
October 12, 2008 |
| • |
October 19, 2008 |
| • |
October 26, 2008 |
| • |
November 02, 2008 |
| • |
November 09, 2008 |
| • |
November 16, 2008 |
| • |
November 30, 2008 |
| • |
December 07, 2008 |
| • |
December 21, 2008 |
| • |
December 28, 2008 |
| • |
February 15, 2009 |
| • |
February 22, 2009 |
| • |
April 12, 2009 |
| • |
April 19, 2009 |
| • |
April 26, 2009 |
| • |
May 03, 2009 |
| • |
May 10, 2009 |
| • |
May 17, 2009 |
| • |
May 24, 2009 |
| • |
May 31, 2009 |
| • |
June 07, 2009 |
| • |
June 14, 2009 |
| • |
June 21, 2009 |
| • |
July 05, 2009 |
| • |
July 12, 2009 |
| • |
July 19, 2009 |
| • |
August 02, 2009 |
| • |
August 30, 2009 |
| • |
September 06, 2009 |
| • |
September 20, 2009 |
| • |
October 04, 2009 |
| • |
October 11, 2009 |
| • |
October 18, 2009 |
| • |
November 08, 2009 |
| • |
November 15, 2009 |
|
|
| SOFTBALL LINKS |
|
|
|
Legal Batter's Box
by Dave
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
A reader recently wrote in with a complaint. The issue involved a team of travel players beating up on his rec team. The travel girls stood at the plate, 3 feet in front of the dish, and hit with their high performance composite bats just 35 feet, after taking a stride, from the pitcher's plate. His concern was the safety of his players. He noted that his purposes in coaching recreational ball are to emphasize team work, skill fundamentals, and general enjoyment of the game. He expressed disdain for travel players beating up rec players for the purpose of "practice" and general dislike for the aggressive tactics employed by the travel girls against his recreational team. The girls themselves, not any coach, argued with the umpire over the dimensions of the batter's box and cajoled him into allowing their stances out to three feet in front of the plate. He believed they should be called out due to hitting outside the box.
There are two reasons I am posting this issue to the blog. First of all, I don't really have much patience for travel players infilitrating a rec league. But the reality is many do because they want to participate in the all-star program in Little League, Babe Ruth or some such. And many leagues encourage or tolerate travel players in their rec leagues because they want them on the all-star team, because they will be playing with some of the rec-only kids on the high school team, and for other reasons. Both arguments (for and against travel players in a rec league) have merit. And the reality is that when we see our local rec all-star teams reach far into national playoffs, we often know the girls on the team from travel circles. There's no getting around travel players in rec leagues unless the league decides this is what they want to do.
Secondly, the batter's box rules issue is an interesting one. We seldom see a box drawn to regulation whether the competition is rec league, travel tournament, or high school. Very often some guy who is completely clueless, like me, gets a liner and proceeds to guestimate the approximate boundaries. I know I have drawn some pretty bad batter's boxes in my time. &n bsp; Even when a template is available, most boxes are drawn wrong.
Without going into chapter and verse, a softball batter's box is supposed to extend four feet from a line drawn through the center of a 17 inch homeplate. That means, the front of the batter's box should extend slightly more than 3 feet in front of the front edge of the dish. In other words, these travel players in the rec league were standing legally within the dimensions of the batter's box as expressed in the rulebook, at least before contacting the ball.
There have been many times I have seen discussion at homeplate about the box. Most often, a coach complains because they believe somebody was or was not outside the box when contact with the ball was made. Sometimes the issue is a batter being struck by a hit ball in front of the box. These discussions are often protracted and very often do not result in any change to the original ruling. Umpires very often know the dimensions of the box and that the one drawn in front of them is incorrect. Most rule on the actual batter's box as opposed to the drawn one. I have seen umps go so far as to first explain the issue to a coach and then step off the actual dimensions with their feet. Most of the time, the coach leaves the discussion with a perplexed look, as if to say, "I didn't know that." I dare say, most folks, be they players, coaches or fans, have never looked inside a rulebook to see the dimensions of the batter's box.
To go a step further, batters are required to stand with both feet inside the box before the pitch is thrown. Also, they cannot make contact with the ball while one whole foot is completely outside the box. So, perhaps the coach who wrote to me has a valid argument. He seemed to be saying that the travel girls made contact when one of their feet was about 2 feet outside the batter's box. That's not legal and it should be called.
Just to wrap up this brief discussion of an important rule point, the softball batter's box does indeed extend slightly more than 3 feet beyond the plate. The typical drawn box is usually wrong. Umpires enforce the rules, not the whims of the field crew. They usually apply the rule on the batter's box the same way they usually apply the rule on the pitcher's circle regardless of how the thing is drawn. Batter's must have both feet inside the batter's box before the pitch and cannot have one foot completelyu outside of it at the time they make contact with the ball.Labels: batting, rules, safety, Travel vs. Recreational, Youth recreational softball
Permanent Link: Legal Batter's Box
 
Just For Fun
by Dave
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Recently, at a softball game, a girl suffered an injury while pitching. She was struck in the hand by a line drive. She could not continue pitching. The hand was swollen, black and blue, and looked as if it might be broken, possibly in several places. The girl had to come out of defensive line-up but due to the rules under which this game was played, the team was forced to either bat her or take an out when her position came around. They chose to send her up to bat while holding the bat in one hand. What do you think about that?
Before you answer, consider that this was not some sort of big time college or professional game. This was not a national competition. This was a USSSA sanctioned 10U game. It was for a state title and probably a bid to nationals. But we're talking 10U here. Really! I mean it!!
To round out your understanding of this event, the pitcher and other players on the opposing team were upset to the point of tears with the prospect of having to pitch and play against a girl bandaged and obviously hurt. The opposing team objected to the umpires. They consulted with the UIC and tournament director. Ultimately the conclusion arrived at was there was no relevant rule and the decision was entirely up to the coaches of the team with the hurt girl. She batted against a pitcher wiping tears out of her eyes. The outcome is unimportant.
That's what I thought you'd say!
My reactions are as follows:
1) As a parent, I would never allow my child to suffer through that. I'd probably never again allow the team's coaches the privilege of working with my kid. I might consider legal or other action to make sure the coaches never worked with children again.
2) As a coach, I'd never ask a kid to do something like that. Instead, I would feel it my duty to have the parent take the kid for immediate medical attention. I don't have the expertise to have an opinion on what sort of damage might be done but it does occur to me that perhaps permanent nerve damage could result from severe swelling. While we provide legal protections to volunteer coaches acting within a degree of normal, prudent person, (I believe this transcends that and I know how I would vote on a jury if a case like this ever came before me. The coach would lose his house!
3) As a person who has coached softball and been involved with a few organizations, I wonder how this could possibly enhance the particular team's, coach's, and org's reputation. If this, in and of itself, does not reduce the number and quality of kids who show up at tryouts, there is something seriously wrong with our community.
4) As an outsider of the teams and the tournament - I wasn't there and am going only by witness accounts - I am ashamed that anyone in the youth softball world would have a kid bat under these circumstances. I'd like 5 minutes with the guy who made this decision. But, while I feel strongly about promoting the sport, I think this event provides the impetus for certain rule changes which I'm going to get to shortly.
5) Finally, as a person interested in the game and its rules, I believe umpires should be given "reasonable man/woman" rights to determine whether they believe a player should or should not be allowed to continue in a game. At the very least, there ought to be some reasonable guidelines beyond mere "blood" rules. Tournament directors ought to be able to say, "no, this kid cannot continue."
It does not matter to me that the kids on the opposing team did not want to play against this girl. It does not matter to me that the pitcher was crying at the prospect of having to pitch against her. It matters some but is not dispositive that these were 10s. They could just as easily been 12s, 14s, 16s. I am still against the girl being put up to bat. At some age and level of competition, I suppose my opinion changes - it has to.
Had this been the NPF championship game, I think you have to let the batter bat. Ditto for the WCWS. Between say 16U and the WCWS, I'm less certain. I suppose a kid should be allowed to continue at the state high school champiopnship game under these circumstances. I expect that most professional, college and high school teams would never find themselves in this circumtsance. Their rosters are larger. But I am clear that this shouldn't be allowed to happen at USSSA 10U games, even the national championship.
Our society has certain norms of behavior which are applicable under legal applications. For instance, if a child is allowed to eat such a horrendous diet that they attain a level of obesity which is abhorent to most of us, that child can be removed from the custody of his or her parents. Similarly, severe manutrition is considered parental child abuse. There are norms of behaviors in terms of punitive acts which may be applied. Exceed those and you'll have to answer to a judge.
Within the sports world, there are similar norms of behavior which, if exceeded, could result in criminal prosecution. These are generally reflective of societal norms. If a parent refused to get a child medical attention for an injury like this, I suspect they could be brought up on child abuse charges absent certain over-riding and extreme conditions. This case does not qualify for the types of conditions. This case is clearly abusive. It must result in some sort of action by USSSA and other sanctioning bodies because, al0ong with being an embarrassment to the coach, the team, and the org, it has to be an embarrassment to USSSA because it cewrtainly is an embarrassment to the softball community at large.
USSSA and all the other bodies must give some sort of authority to tournament directors, UICs, and/or the umps themselves to say, "no, that kid cannot play under these circumstances."Labels: rules, youth tournament teams
Permanent Link: Just For Fun
At Long Last ... 43
by Dave
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
At long last, the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) has voted to implement a 43 feet pitching distance for high school varsity games. This rule is effective for the 2010-11 school year but states can switch the distance this upcoming year, if they choose to. Here is the press release.
Over the years, I have come out in favor of this change on a couple of different levels. For one thing, if the college girls pitch at this distance, so should girls at 14U and above, including high school. The boys game has always been that way. Why should girls, who mature earlier relative to their older counterparts, as compared to boys, be any different?
Another reason I have been in favor of the change is high school softball games within and between the best 10-25% of teams is almost always a very low scoring affair. To the extent the pitching distance change results in more balance between offense and defense, I think it has to be good for the game. The reaction of coaches in the two states which tested 43 feet suggests the desired results have been achieved.
Along these lines, if you compare reaction time for batters between baseball and softball, the reality is girls must react far more quickly than boys. A very fast 12U or 14U pitcher gives batters no more time to see and react to a pitch than a relatively fast high school varsity baseball pitcher. I'd do the math for you but it bores me to do that again. The announcers at the WCWS did, I'm sure, understate the case quite a bit. They suggested that pitchers throwing at 67 during the WCWS were comparable to 90+ mph baseball fastballs. If you account for the distance from which the ball is released in both games and accurately calculate the time from hand to plate, I think you come out with a more drastic result. As I said, I won't calculate it for you, but I suggest the actual time is more like a 100 mph baseball fastball.
One of the reasons stated for making the change over the years is to give pitchers more time in which to react to balls hit back at them. The amount of time provided is pretty much negligible, hundreths of a second. It is also countered by the fact that batters will hit the ball more solidly given their longer time in which to react. I think this reason for moving to 43 feet is perhaps the weakest one.
In terms of the impact on girls themselves, there are any number of girls, beginning at sophomore year of high school, who are stuck in this cycle of having to perfect their pitches at 43 feet for fall showcases and higher level winter competitive ball, then move back to 40 feet to prepare for the spring high school season, then move back to 43 feet in time for summer ball. Very often pitchers have a matter of two weeks, sometimes even less, to make the transition. This is, I believe, too much to ask of the best competitors in our game. And the girls who are already pitching at 43 feet in high school have the advantage.
Perhaps the largest percentage of folks who have written reactions to my opinions on the subject have been against the change. Their reasons are varied. But I think mostly they have expressed concern for their pitcher-daughters.
They complain that if the purpose is to protect the pitcher, this change will not accomplish that. I agree. The difference in reaction time is minimal. But without scientific studies, I also suppose that none of us really knows if the change will matter or not.
They also worry about slower pitchers who will give batters way too much time to see and hit the ball. That's probably true too but it is almost as true at 40 as it is at 43. Speed is a relative concept. Speed gets adjusted to. If you took someone who hits well against 50 mph speed, and put them up against 50, they would struggle. Keep them in the 60 for an extended period of time and I suspect they'll learn to do well. High school pitching is a fairly broad spectrum but at the better levels, I think it tends to be around 55-60 with some faster than 60 and most at or above 55. Girls seem to do reasonably well against 60 mph pitching if they face it routinely. But play them against a very slow pitcher one day, a fast one the next, then a slow one the next, and they will struggle against each - not just against the fast pitcher.
To go a bit further, it seems like most softball hitters have greater difficulty adjusting to slower stuff than they do faster. That's not always true but many times I have seen teams use a very slow pitcher for 3 or more innings to slow down a strong offensive team. The best teams almost never seem to struggle against a fast pitcher unless she also has great command and movement too.
I realize this can get rather circular. It also offers the opportunity to contradict oneself. Do I think hitters will do better against pitching from 43 feet? Yes. Do I think pitchers will be protected? Probably not, but maybe I'm wrong. Ultimately, I think I have to make my decision to be in favor or against a change to 43 feet based upon whether I think it is better for the game or not. I think it will produce more offense in a game which needs more offense. I think it will give the pitchers a hair more time in which to react and at the same time diminish the benefit of that as hitters get better looks. I think pitchers should practice at one distance rather than shift back and forth. I think it is time the almost fully developed girls at all ages pitch at the same distance the same way the boys have done for decades on end.
Do you have an opinion? If so, send it to me and I may decide to include it in this piece.Labels: high school, rules
Permanent Link: At Long Last ... 43
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
Permanent Link: Put The Rules Online, Now!!
Backwards Batter-Baserunner
by Dave
Friday, May 29, 2009
A reader writes in to ask the following question while specifically stating the context as women's college softball.
"Runners on 2nd and 3rd, batter hits a slow roller toward 1st baseman; she fields the ball and runs towards batter-runner coming from home; and batter-runner starts back towards home. What happens to the 2 baserunners?"
Before we get to the baserunners, let's get past the batter. According to rule 12.4.11, the batter is out if "she steps back towards home plate to avoid or delay a tag by a fielder." I think that is a pretty obvious call for any umpire.
Secondly, the ball becomes dead at this moment. And the effect mandated by the NCAA rulebook is "each runner must return to the last base legally touched at the time of the pitch." (emphasis added by me)
The reason I chose to post this very simple rule is because it is a critical part of the game. If you are batting and you've got runners on 2nd and 3rd with one or no outs, you've just got to do anything in your power (anything legal) to get at least one run home. As I implied the other day, we should train girls to hit the ball into play in these situations. We should also train baserunners to look for any bat and ball contact, angle down, that is not hit directly to the pitcher, and go immediately from third on such contact.
From a defensive point of view, the related play I like which I have seen top 20 Gold teams perform involves the first baseman coming down the line to take a throw from another infielder in order to apply a tag before the batter-runner reaches first and, thereby, put her closer to home to throw out the runner from third. This play is used on any infield grounder on which the runner at third does not immediately break for the plate. That shouldn't happen except on balls hit right to third or the pitcher but we have all seen runners at third freeze on infield grounders hit directly at any infielder from time to time.
When infielders field a grounder and the runner at third is frozen, the first baseman is well advised to position herself somewhat down the line to take the throw, apply a tag and make a shorter throw home. This is very useful on balls hit back to the pitcher or 3B when the offensive team has a quick runner at third. Most of the time, the runner from third can be nailed.
Obviously, first basemen who field a grounder directly at them, should, after fielding the ball, sprint towards the batter-runner with both hands on the ball, apply a tag and, if the runner from third breaks, throw home. Also, pretty obviously, the runner from third is the important out most of the time and that has to take precedence unless you are already up by a large number of runs. In those relatively infrequent cases, getting the batter-runner out would take precedence unless your pitcher is going for some sort of shutout record!
Another reason this rule is important is because sometimes we find ourselves in a first and third situation in which a hit and run or run and hit play is called. On those, the runner at first either goes immediately or gets a larger than normal lead and goes on contact. if the ball is hit right to the first baseman, she attempts a tag, and the batter-runner retreats to avoid or delay the tag, not only is the runner from third prohibited from attempting to score due to the dead ball condition, but also the runner from first heading to second must return to first.
As with all rules, it is critical that our players understand them in order to avoid unintended consequences. Everyone on your team should be instructed to not back away from a tag when becoming a batter-runner headed to first on a fair batted ball. If a runner merely proceeds slowly, there is a decent chance she can delay the tag and thereby allow the runner from third to score. If she simply stops or goes very slowly, the rules do not address this. But take a step back and all bets are off.Labels: rules
Permanent Link: Backwards Batter-Baserunner
2 Strikes, Time To Bunt!
by Dave
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
How many times have you seen this: a girl tries to bunt but fails twice. Now she's down 0-2, 1-2 or something like that and she swings away. Why? Why not try to get one down with 2 strikes?
There is an obvious answer to my question. It is the one which always comes immediately to mind. The reason many coaches and players do not bunt with two strikes is, if the ball is hit foul, that results in a strikeout. We want to avoid the K, so we stop trying to bunt. Makes sense, no? No, not necessarily.
Before we move on and address my strategic suggestion, let's define a few terms and discuss the rules a bit. The term "bunt" is not necessarily a very well understood one. The 2009 NCAA rulebook defines the term as "a legally batted ball not swung at but intentionally tapped with the bat." That is an inadequate definition since "slapping" pretty much fits within this definition unless a relatively full swing is taken. In another definition, the term "bunt attempt" contains a further elaboration which reads, "holding the bat in the strike zone is considered a bunt attempt. In order to take a pitch, the bat must be withdrawn — pulled backward and away from the ball."
So a bunt attempt really consists of holding the bat in the strike zone as the ball enters the hitting area. This definition distinguishes between a true slap in which the bat should at least theoretically be run through the strike zone, not merely held like a swing and placed into the zone to tap the ball. In other words, the archetypical beginner youth or high school slapper who merely puts the bat into the zone, though not in the classic bunting mode, is actually bunting rather than slapping.
One's hand placement on the bat does not determine whether a bunt attept has been made. We know that there is a style of hitting which involves splitting the hands rather than having them in contact with one another. We also know that there are bunting styles which do not require the hands to be split. The determining factor over whether a "swing" is a bunt attempt or not is whether the bat is held in the strike zone or not. And this becomes rather important with two strikes when a foul ball is hit.
Another NCAA rule notes, "A strike is charged to the batter ... when the batter bunts foul after the second strike." In other words, if you have two strikes and bunt the ball foul, you're out on a strike out.
I have seen a number of instances in which a self-described "slapper" has been called out for a fouled third strike. This almost always precipitates a discussion between coach and umpire as well as catcalls from the batter's father and mother claiming the umpire doesn't know the rules. Generally, the umpire has ruled the "swing" a bunt attempt and, therefore, the foul is a third strike. The ump is right. The coach and parents are wrong.
OK, so a bunted foul with two strikes is an out. Sometimes, that thing some people call a slap is actually a bunt, not a true slap. A slap really involves more movement of the bat than a bunt. The NCAA rulebook says a slap is a "short, chopping motion rather than with a full swing." If you leave the bat in the strike zone as the ball travels through it, I think what you have is a bunt. If you swing the bat through the zone in a short, chopping motion, what you have is a slap. And, importantly, "A ball that is slapped foul is treated like any other foul ball and shall not result in an out unless caught in flight."
But enough of the rules, I think you get it. Let's get back to the strategy.
I do not believe I know of more than a handful of people - players, coaches, and parents - who think bunting with two strikes is a viable strategy. It is almost never called for by the typical coach. I do know some high school coaches and a few in travel who will do it as a strategy. I also know of some including me who would call for it as a sort of punishment for girls who deliberately bunt the ball foul, sometimes because their fathers who don't understand softball have suggested it as a strategy to get a "real" at-bat. But, for the most part, bunting with two strikes is avoided like the plague.
Without looking at any cold and hard facts, let's instead talk about this anecdotally. How many times have you seen this: bunter fouls off a couple and has two strikes after which the defensive coach instructs the corner infielders to move back because there are two strikes. That is common, probably to a 95% rate. And it is a safe approach since 95% of all coaches won't call for a bunt in this situation. But the good and aggressive ones will!
OK, so how about this, how many times have you seen a former bunter, now with two strikes, finish herself off with a third strike. Let's face it, softball is filled with strikeouts. Now that is a legitimate plague in our sport. If the pitcher is a contact pitcher, then you don't see so many Ks but, ordinarily, there are a ton of them in the typical, well-pitched game. And if the former bunter has put herself into an 0-2 hole, the strikeout is an all too common event. The high percentage event on an 0-2 pitch, or at least shortly thereafter, is a K. And yet, we do not even attempt a bunt because we are trying to avoid a strikeout! It makes sense to at least consider bunting a kid with two strikes since what we are trying to avoid when we don't is probably going to happen anyways.
Therre are advantages to bunting with two strikes, if you can get it down. The field situation for an 0-2 bunt is often a lot better than it was prior to this point. The corners are back. Just about everyone on the field will be surprised if the batter bunts. If she can get one down in fair ground, it is almost always successful. So in a tight game, why not give it a try?
As a corollary to the two strike bunt, I have another suggestion which is probably only applicable to youth games, though sometimes presents itself in higher levels. At the youth level, it is fairly common to encounter a "slapper" who is just learning. She steps over to the left side for the first couple of pitches but if she fails to execute a slap into fair ground, she moves back over to the right side for the next couple of pitches. This is fairly common in youth play but I have seen it as late as high school, where often a coach identifies a fast kid and tries to teach her to slap for the first time.
(I want to add one rule element here because I have seen it called. When the batter steps across the plate while the pitcher is holding the ball inside the circle, perhaps while in contact with the rubber, some umps will call her out. Before a batter crosses the plate, she should call time out to avoid this. You are allowed to cross the plate when time is out. You're not supposed to do this while the pitcher is on the rubber.)
I understand that a girl may want to try out the new skill she is working on but, after failing a few times, wants to go back over and take some real swings. I'm not going to criticize this approach. It's a learning tool. But what I want to suggest is a strategy which may catch the defense off guard.
When a kid who throws righty steps to the left handed batter's box, not very many people are fooled into believing she is a natural left-handed batter. The defense expects a slap or a drag bunt. Either the corners move in or the defense takes up one of the defensive positionings we refer to as slapper-D. After those first couple of pitches, after which the batter decides to go back over to the right-handed box, they move back into standard positioning. This is the perfect time for a right handed drag bunt!
As a final strategic point, I want to bring up the situation in which it is far more prefereable to tap a grounder to one of the middle infielders than it is to take a full cut and strike out or otherwise accomplish an unproductive out. We've been over the offensive perspective when you have a runner on third with one or no outs. In that circumstance, we want our girls to be conditioned to run home if the ball comes off the bat angle down and not directly back to the pitcher. This is more true when we have runners on second and third but anytime there is a runner on third, we want the batter to hit the ball into play rather than try to drive in the run with a hit.
There is a technique I have seen many well-experienced batters use. I refer to it as a "two strike swing." the batter starts out looking as if she might be thinking of bunting, with the bat out in front of her in the strike zone. Then, as the pitcher begins her motion, the batter draws the bat back but not to a full cocked, loaded position. Basically, she pulls back to perhaps the halfway point, possibly as far back as three quarters. Then she attempts to hit the ball into play with less force than she might have during other pitches. What she is trying to do is reduce the liklihood of a K and increase the probability of hitting the ball into play, preferably on the ground. The reduced swing provides the batter better bat control. This is an effective technique which when well practiced very often produces the desired result.
My strategic suggestion for this technique is, why wait for two strikes? Anytime you have a runner on third, I think the situation dictates a "two strike swing."
I think we often get caught up in the illusion that baseball and softball are essentially the same game. We do many of the same things in one that we learned in the other despite the fact that there are pronounced differences between the games. Not bunting with two strikes is something which I learned in baseball - though even there, it can be effective. In softball, with its relatively lower scoring, bunting is a more important tool. And in softball, with its higher rate of strikeouts, I think attempting a bunt with two strikes makes more sense than it does in baseball.
In softball, the difference between the winner and loser, especially in championship games, often involves the winner catching the loser off guard. Aside from two strike bunting, moving from the left to the right and yet still attempting a drag bunt can be an effective strategy. Aside from these, practicing so-called "two strike hitting" can be an effedctive way to push a run across. And it works even when the batter does not have two strikes.Labels: batting, Bunt, game strategy, Offense, rules
Permanent Link: 2 Strikes, Time To Bunt!
An Apology
by Dave
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
I need to write a public apology to one reader who wrote in to ask what she thought was a simple question. I over-reacted partly because I harbor some ill feelings on the subject and partly because I am ill with something that has kept me bed-ridden for a few days, missing one of my kids' middle school games, a game in which our high school defeated a top 20 (nationally ranked) high school, the D3 Women's College World Series, not to mention days of work. I did catch a little of the opening round of the D3 WCWS though since then I have been stuck in bed with what my doctor called a "Horrendous Bronchitis" which I still think is the flu.
(I told the doctor that I had a high fever, sweats, chills, and aches all over my body. A few minutes later, when I inquired about the possibility of a flu test, he told me there is a shortage of test kits and doctors have been encouraged to only use them when they highly suspect someone has the flu. I asked him what conditions would cause him to highly suspect someone has the flu. He said high fever, sweats, chills and body aches.)
In any event, the reader innocently inquired about why she had been prevented from operating a cowbell or airhorn at her granddaughter's KY high school games. My knee-jerk reaction was kind of over the top, even creepy. She must have thought me the biggest lunatic to ever have walked the Earth. Perhaps she is right!
In any event, here is the substance of the question, my approximate response (toned down and altered in substance for readability) and the way I think the issue should be viewed:
The question was, "We were recently told that ... cowbells nor other noisemakers can be used at the KY High School Fast Pitch Games. If this is true, I'd like to know why? Almost everyone enjoyed the horns and cowbells, including the players. The players were so happy, and proud when the horns were blown for them. They said it made them feel more confident and gave recognition that they had made a good play, or had a good at-bat. They miss the horns and cowbells and so do we. Why would the KY Girls High School Softball rules, rule these out?"
I really do not have an answer as I am not all that familiar with KY HS rules or HS rules generally per se, at least not the intricacies which differentiate them from NCAA, ASA, etc. I am more comfortable with the general concepts similar to all bodies' rules which make them similar. As such, I have no idea whether artificial noisemakers are prohibited from all high school games generally, or only in select states which have chosen to ban them. Alternatively, it is conceivable that a single umpire doesn't like them and prohibits their use. I do know that the NCAA expressly prohibits the use of "artificial noisemakers, air horns and electronic amplifiers."
In any event, I am familiar with the concept under which anyone, absent a specific rule, would still feel justified in banning them and I have to say I fall on that side of the discussion rather than the side which notes "almost everyone enjoyed" them. Personally, I think at most half of those in attendance or participating in the game enjoyed them. The other side experienced revulsion in equal measure.
As I said, I have some emotional responses to this very issue. We play against a travel team which rings a cowbell excessively. I think initially, it was cute.
A kid got a hit, ring, ring. OK, no harm done.
A kid stole a base, scored a run, made a nice play, ring, ring, ring. OK, it must make the player proud(?) or something like that, although, if she isn't already proud of her steal, defensive prowess, etc., there might be a bit of a problem here. If a kid can't get something out of the game itself and needs to have the world stand still while the tintinnabulation, the gush of euphony, that so voluminously and musically wells, in a happy Runic rhyme, well then, perhaps softball is the wrong kind of game for the kid.
After a few ringy-dingies, the bell began to irritate rather than please.
Runner on first, pitch in the dirt gets by the catcher, bell sounds wildly while the runner heads to second and the catcher, still unable to find the ball, unable to hear the pitcher yelling "left, left, left," finally locates the ball as the runner slides into third.
Then there's the grounder to third with runner on first, third baseman makes a good throw to second but the 2B is slow to cover and the ball sails into right center as we see the RF is late to back up and the ball rolls to the fence. That lovely cowbell rings incessantly, what a world of merriment its melody foretells, keeping time, time, time as the runner from first, then rounds third and the batter-baserunner rounds second, heads for third. It continues to ring out its delight as the throw in from the outfield sails over the infielder's head and eludes any other player, the batter rounds third and makes it home without so much as a slide.
Then there's the routine grounder which the fielder misses and which precipitates the rhyming and the chiming of the bells.
Hear the loud alarum bells -
Brazen bells!
What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells!
I bet that ringing made the batter feel really special since she can now be proud of reaching base even when all she did was hit a routine grounder. How does it make the fielder feel? How does it make the 11 year old first year travel player who was inserted at 2B for the first time and missed her first chance to make a simple play? Is she proud? Or does she feel as if the entire world is now familiar with her inadequacy?
I'm going to stop at this point because this is where I got really nasty about the use of artificial noisemakers at softball games. I suggested that any team which uses such becomes marked by its opponent. Parents on that team may begin to wonder why it seems that every other team aside from their own is so nasty and unpleasant. They may be surprised when efforts are expended to learn the identity of the ringer and the number of the player who is related to the ringer. They may be surprised when another sort of music is played, chin music.
That's right boys and girls, when you obnoxiously use some sort of artificial noisemaker in this kind of a setting, everyone in attendance does not love and adore your musical sounds. At most, the votes of confidence amount to right about half. The other half despise your innocent cowbell. They'd like to ring something of yours but it isn't the bell. And the other team will likely mark you for its most spirited efforts from that time forward.
Now, to the way in which I think any sort of artificial noisemakers, etc. ought to be viewed under a more strict interpretation of the rules. Obvi0ously the NCAA has a specific prohibition. I'm not sure about the NFHS. I don;t recall whether ASA or other youth bodies have such. I only know that we have heard some bells wrung in youth travel (ASA, NSA, FAST, PONY) and never have seen an umpire act to put a stop to it. But that's beside the point because, all these bodies have specific prohibuitions against making any attempt to deliberately distract your opposition. This is manfiested, for example, in rules against anything verbal done deliberately to confuse the defense.
When, in MLB, A-Rod ran out at 2-out pop fly, ran behind the third baseman who called for it, and said something, it really doesn't matter what he said. The fact that he said anything should have been enough to require a call of interference from the umpire. You're not allowed to do that.
Then again, A-Rod never has seemed to have a firm grip upon the nuances of the rules of the game. I was at Yankee stadium when he infamously tried to knock the ball out of a player's hands during an ALCS game. At the time, I, being a rabid Yankee fan who was in full froth, was pretty sure it was a legitimate play. I couldn't see what had happened because I was on the other side of the field but I was sure the ump had blown the call until the next day when I saw the replay. It isn't legitimate. The ump made the right call. You can no more do this than you, as a batter or baserunner, can run into the outfield and do circles around a fielder on a high fly, position a fielder right in front of the plate by the opposite batter's box on an obvious bunt situation, run around the outfield like a lunatic to distract the batter like Jimmy Piersall did to Ted Williams, or for that matter, ring a cowbell while the ball is in play.
I can imagine that an extremely reserved and disciplined person could theoretically restrain themselves enough to only ring their cowbell after the ball is dead. That one person on the planet, however, does not usually attend youth or high school softball games due to their other responsibilities such as conducting religious services for the other folks in his monastery. Now that I've said that, I do have to note that in the many, many sporting events I have observed over the years, members of the clergy do tend to be among the more "spirited" fans I have seen. I'm not sure a religious person would be the right candidate for significant restraint at a sporting event. Perhaps there does not exist a single humnan being who, while rooting for one side in a contest, can be trusted to restrain themselves so much. That has probably been the experience of a number of sports organizing bodies including the NCAA. And, if KY high school softball rulemakers, or the NFHS itself have decided to ban these at all games, I guess I can see their logic.
OK, so that's my rant. I am genuinely sorry to have been so abusive to the person who wrote me. I'm a little grouchy these past several days. I would have liked to have seen Jessica Rhoads of Messiah College pitch another game. She's really good. I would have liked to see my kids play school ball though the game I missed turned out to be uncompetitive and there's a few more still left. I would have liked to watch our local high school in all its glory but there are games still ahead including rematches with nationally ranked teams, assuming they remain so after losses. I apologize for being abusive. But noisemakers are not harmless or fun for all. Your exhuberance in proclaiming them loved by all, combined with a coughing and sneezing fit, made me react harshly. Please accept my apology.Labels: interference, rules
Permanent Link: An Apology
Dented Bats
by Dave
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Rod wrote in with a question regarding what he feels will be a major issue at tournaments this year. The issue very likely could be a hot one as well as a hotly contested one. The rule is one which is, like most rules, subject to umpire interpretation. Rod was seeking advice and I'm not sure I have anything good to tell him aside from the obvious. Here's Rod's question:
"I've been trying to get clarification on the new ASA bat dent rule for 2009. How is it going to affect Anderson bats. These bats generally wave up and even hit better when they do. Anderson came out with a new Techzilla fastpitch and just released a holiday edition purple one for fastpitch. Sites that are selling these holiday editions are stating that Anderson tweaked the alloy to prevent denting in anticipation of the rule change. If this is true and the ring test doesn't have to be used, this will put more confusion out there than ever before. It will be how an umpire interprets a wave to a dent. I believe a wave is not a dent but I've seen umpires rub their hand down a barrel of a bat and they could feel them. At least with a ring test, you knew if your bat passed or had a chance to be thrown out. Most of the girls on my daughters team swing Rocketechs or Techzillas. Quite a few of them are waved up and even have small dents that easily pass the ring test. Most of the local tournaments never even check bats but the qualifying tournaments are stricter. Will we have to start going to composite bats? I have e-mailed Anderson and have not received a reply. Could you give me any feedback on this rule or Anderson bats in general.
Anytime a rule is given to umpires which requires any sort of subjective decision, it is a bad rule. Umpires are guaranteed to interpret this differently. And it doesn't necessarily vary according to what level of play you are engaged in. Every subjective rule gets called differently by different umpires and there is no particular trend for local tournaments vs. qualifiers vs. nationals.
If I were an umpire, I think I would call illegal pitches for either leaping or crow hopping on perhaps as many as half the kids I have seen pitch everywhere from 10U to 18U. I mean that in terms of literally hundreds of games at all of these levels and I mean that with respect to pitchers from all over the country, whether trained by well respected, big name coaches or whomever. Many pitchers do something illegal with their feet or hands and frequently get away with it. That goes for USA Olympians, college pitchers, and many kids at local youth tournaments, qualifiers and even nationals. The rules are applied so subjectively that it defies reason.
At a qualifier or nationals, I have seen pitchers talked to for obvious infractions and not one illegal pitch called during the game though the illegality continues. I have seen numerous illegal pitches called at nominal ASA tournaments - as opposed to qualifiers. At nationals, there does seem to be greater consistency on pitch calls but not always.
I have seen pitchers obviously walk into pitches at national tournaments and when you point this out to an ump, he angrily tells you to go back to your dugout. I have seen pitchers take signs from the back of the circle, walk right up and not bring their hands together or hesitate for even a tenth of a second before throwing. I have seen kids with very, very minor, slight tendencies, which under the letter of the law might be interpreted to be illegal, get called numerous times for illegal pitches at early games in local-yocal tournaments. I have seen so many quick pitches at nationals or qualifiers, I cannot begin to tell you. But these rules are apparently subjective and you get a mixed bag of enforcement at all levels. And it varies from game to game even at the same tournament, perhaps even with the same ump(s).
Several years ago, my older daughter's team attended the PONY national tournament. Bats and other equipment were inspected very closely at our first game. Then at the second game, everything was inspected again, just as closely or more so than it had in the first game. Then in the third game, the umps didn't bother. I chalked this up to everything having been gone over so thoroughly early in the competition that no further inspection was deemed necessary. This made sense to me at the time I thought of it, but in game four, bats were again closely inspected, in game five, nothing, in game six, again a thorough inspection, and finally in game seven, nothing.
The very next year I took a team to the same nationals and this time not one single inspection took place. Not one bat ring was used. Helmets with missing chin straps were not tossed. I should say the umps required us to line up our bats and helmets but they barely glanced at them - not a ring, nothing. The following year we played several qualifiers and it was a mixed bag. At this one, equipment was looked at once. At that one, bats were closely inspected before every game. At this or that one, no umpire ever looked at the equipment. There was no rhyme or reason over several years. And this took place regardless of whether the tournament was PONY, ASA, NSA, USSSA, whether it was nominal, a qualifier, or whatever. At one point, several years after my first experiences, I looked like a complete neophyte to my team as I warned them about equipment inspections several times which never took place. Then we played some friendly and the equipment was inspected for twenty minutes!
I should injuect that the only consistent equipment inspection I have ever seen took place under the Little League International tournament. But that was many years ago and I don't know if they still do this consistently.
I suppose the only thing you can do with this rule is expect it to be enforced every time - bring a second bat if you suspect you have one which might be booted. But each time, also assume the rule will not be enforced. Bring your beat up, dented, waved, seasoned bats and wait until the ump actually kicks them out. Otherwise, just carry on the way you always do.
I do realize that this is not the best answer. Kids get attached to bats. But with such a subjective rule in place, I cannot think of a better way to proceed. Our first year of travel, my oldest daughter started hitting with a Rocketech halfway through the year. She fell in love with that bat and believed it was the reason she was hitting. When the ump threw it out because he could not get the ring through the barrel, I saw tears well up in her eyes and then start to flow like Niagara. Some smart soul with magical hands grabbed the bat, ran his hands over it a few times to smooth it out and then asked the ump to try again. He did and it passed. Weird!
Since that day, I have tried to work psychological games with my kids, having them hit with two different bats at various tournaments. Right now both kids have Rocketechs and one other bat, one a Catalyst, the other a Beast. I have the girls use both bats as often as I can - especially during slumps and hot streaks - so that if one day the RT is booted, they will still have a bat with which they are comfortable.
Right now, we are between Christmas and New Years. Many girls found bats under their trees, received them for Hanukkah, Solstice Presents ;> or for whatever. Obviously those who were handed Anderson bvats may be very interested to read this. I like Anderson bats and so do my kids. I don't want to alarm those who dug deep into their pockets to buy one for the holidays. But I do strongly suggest that anyone who received any kind of expensive bat, take the manufacturers precautions so as to minimize damage.
Many bats tell you the warrantee will not be honored if you use the bat at temperatures below 65 degree Farenheit or use them with machine balls. Some manufacturers suggest turning the bat one quarter or so after every contact. I strongly urge parents to explain this to their daughters. The single most important rule is never use your good bat with machine balls. Always keep an older bat or but a cheap one to use with the machine, Hit-N-Stik, etc. Also, while I don't suggest you keep a thermometer in your bat bag, on cold days, I suggest you use something aside from your good bat. And with any bat, it is always a great idea to give it a twist after making contact - unless of course you have a Mattingly Beast - triangle handle - which doesn't work that way.
I do suggest that you try to have your kids work with two bats since it seems pretty likely that some day one of their bats will be booted out of a game. Unless you like watching crocodile tears, it is prudent to have a back-up plan. And if you bat is heaved out of a game, try it again and see if the umps consistently boot it, before talking to the manufacturer for a replacement. Many times, an ump will hgit a little piece of dirt or have a mental hiccup which causes him or her to think a bat is dented or warped. Just because one ump kicks a bat out doesn't mean it actually no longer passes inspection every time.
I understand where the ASA is coming from with respect to the dented bat rule. But anytime a rule making body leaves wiggle room for umpires to interpret stuff like this, we're all in for spotty,inconsistent enforcement, lots of arguments, and generally an unpredictable time. The nice thing about bat rings is either a bat passes or it doesn't - except in certain very weird circumstances. When we leave it up to the umps to make decisions like this, for which they have received no formal training, there's no tellling what we'll get.Labels: rules
Permanent Link: Dented Bats
One For The Team
by Dave
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
I forget whether I've mentioned this before or not. An acquaintance tells the story about how he was coaching a youth tournament team in (I think) a championship game which had gone tied into the final inning with bases loaded and two outs, his team at bat. The girl at the plate either hadn't had a hit in quite some time or was in some sort of slump. He was sure she would not now get a game winning hit so he called time to go over and talk to her. He told the girl to lean into the pitch in an attempt to be hit by it. He promised her: 1) it won't hurt and 2) I'll buy you an ice cream after the game, if you do it. So the guy went back to coaching third and the kid stepped into the box. She did what she was told to do and was hit by the pitch. But it did indeed hurt. The girl laid on the ground near home, screaming at the coach, "you said it wasn't going to hurt!" That was the coach's first broken promise. The second was he welched on the deal - he never bought that ice cream!! On the other hand, his team did win the game. I won't pass a value judgment per se on this tactic. It's a good story. But I do want to discuss the overall issue from a couple different angles including the ramifications of girls intentionally getting plunked.
In professional baseball, leaning into the pitch is considered an acceptable strategy. I went to college with a fellow by the name of Craig Biggio who played for the Houston Astros. Biggio was "plunked" 285 times during his major league career, 2 short of the all-time record held by Hughie "Yeehah" Jennings. I cannot be absolutely sure whether Biggio, jennings, or any other particular major league player had himself deliberately plunked but one can imagine at least one of the all-time leaders may have employed this strategy.
I grew up watching Ron Hunt play ball. Hunt's motto was "Some people give their bodies to science; I give mine to baseball" within the context of a discussion about the fact that on a per at-bat basis, Hunt was plunked more than any other player. Hunt was once hit by three pitches in a single game. He set the modern era standard of being plunked 50 times in one season - Jennings was hit 51 times one year during the late 1800s. At retirement, Hunt was the modern era career leader in HBPs with 243. That record was broken by Don Baylor and then Biggio. But Hunt always insisted that he did not deliberately throw himself at pitches in order to be hit. He just leaned in over the plate to hit the ball. Still many question whether Hunt, Jennings, or Biggio might have done this just to get on base at opportune moments.
I haven't heard anyone complain about Baylor since he had over 2,000 hits and was an RBI machine for most of his career. More likely than Baylor leaning into pitches in order to get on base is another strategy employed in baseball - that of intentionally plunking a batter!
I'm not talking about the "plunk" in a vacuum. There are going to be some points in all this, when I am done. But before I get there, I need to tell you some more stories.
Several years ago, my then sleepy 11 year old played her first year of travel softball. At one of our tournaments, there was a very good pitcher lined up against us. She threw hard (55) and had pretty good movement for a 12 year old. My daughter got up to bat against her in a situation which did not hold any opportunity to win the game or even make a serious dent in the score by getting hit by a pitch.
My daughter was, as I said, a sleepy little kid who was also playing with girls much older, larger, stronger, more experienced and skilled than she was. She had really just begun to hit the ball. She was not particularly afraid of being hit by pitches and didn't shy away when facing fast pitchers. She did not and still does not stand particularly close to the plate, choosing instead to stand so as to cover the outside corner with about two inches of bat unless facing a curveball pitcher. But her reactions were a little slow back then so when the pitcher threw an inside screwball, she began to swing, stopped, and was plunked by the pitch while not making a real effort to get out of the way.
She hadn't tried to get out of the way because she thought the pitch was hittable not because she wanted to be plunked. There was no discernible reason to try to get plunked. The pitch was a screwball which moved towards her quite a bit. It was a good pitch which started out looking as if it might be a strike but sliding well into the batter. Still, the idiot umpire called a ball and refused to award the kid first base.
Along the sidelines, many people unrelated to the team had seen this occur. Most couldn't believe the call. They were rather incredulous. They could see what the pitch was - the area behind the backstop was very large and that's where most people were. Not one person I talked to agreed with the call but that's the call that was made. After the kid was tended to and helped from the field, a pinch hitter was sent up and she struck out ending the inning. The rest of the game was filled with screams at the umpire for being a jackass from numerous people including myself. teh manager was on him from that point forwards. People I had never seen before gave him grief. I'll never forget that umpire whose name is known to me but not important to you. Every once in a while he tries to engage me or my acquaintances in conversation at some game. I expect he doesn't understand why we're so cold to him. But the man is a jackass. He's made many other bad calls.
Still, such a call is a perfectly normal occurrence in softball, presumably with good reason given the tactics I and others have seen employed. You almost always see the batter awarded first when plunked in baseball. I don't know if I've ever seen a baseball ump not award first.
In fastpitch softball, many times softball umps refuse to give the batter first. I've seen pitches which plunked the batter be called strikes several times. I'm not sure why in baseball the umps do not make similar rulings - I believe the rules are the same in both games. The one thing I am sure about is that the rules of fastpitch softball do indeed give the umpire the option of awarding first or not based on whether the batter makes what is deemed to be an acceptable attempt to get out of the way. I'm not aware of any set of rules under which the umpire doesn't have discretion in these cases.
Usually such a ruling occurs where the pitch is within 2 to 3 inches of the plate or over it and the batter fails to turn inward and back. What I mean is, if a right handed batter is up and a pitch is close, she can avoid this call by turning in towards the plate and back, facing the umpire. Otherwise she risks being told to remain at bat after being plunked. They don't always make such a call but I've never seen an ump refuse to award first where the batter makes such a movement even though it really is not a sufficient effort to actually get out of the way since it does not move her further away from the pitch.
Part of the problem in either baseball or softball is some of the worst injuries occur as a direct result of being HBP. Baseball players have had their careers ended. Some have suffered effects for the remainder of their lives. And in fastpitch softball, I believe the forces are often greater due to the larger weight of the ball.
I imagine some will disagree that the forces are greater in softball but, to those folks, I point you back to the "Sports Science" episode in which the force of a Jennie Finch fastball was compared to that of a hard throwing minor league baseball pitcher. The baseball pitcher threw several balls which struckj a plate set up to measure impact. Jennie Finch then followed in kind. Her first pitch broke the measuring device. Conclusion: pitched softballs, despite the slower speed, carry greater force.
Of course my proof involves a TV show and one which is kind of prone to putting sensationalism before fact. A more cold, calculated approach is probably appropriate here. Force is generally calculated by a formula in which mass (weight is a reasonable proxy when we limit our analysis to Earthly mass) is multiplied by speed. A good approximate speed for a pitched softball is about 65 mph at professional levels while that for baseball is about 90. A softball weighs in at around 6.8 ounces while a baseball weighs about 5. Multiplying the weight of each times the given speed yields 442 for softball and 450 for baseball. That means the force for a pitched baseball is slightly larger but hold the phone. We aren't talking about professional ball. Instead, we need to look at youth ball.
In the Little League Woprld Series for each sport, which involves 12U level play, baseball pitchers threw right around 65 most of the time. A few hit 70 but most were in the area of 65. In softball, pitchers threw around 53. I believe a few were closer to 60 but the majority were about 53-55 and I want to err on the conservative side. Multiplying 53 and 65 mph out yields a force proxy number of 360 for softball and 325 for baseball. That's quite a larger difference with softball representing more than a ten percent higher force.
So my conclusion is the force of the fastball in youth softball is greater than that in youth baseball. And I believe this has something to do with why umpires enforce the rule for the batter not getting out of the way more than they do in baseball. I think it is a matter of safety for girls playing softball that they be discouraged from leaning in and trying to get plunked.
Indeed, in the instance the e-mailer sent me, the batter who was plunked was hit in the helmet. And the helmet cracked. I've never seen a helmet cracked in a youth baseball game though I have seen more baseball than softball games in my life and, as a player, I was plunked quite a few times in the head. Can you tell?
More to my point, while I understand that many men are involved in coaching softball, most do not take the trouble to calculate the force with which their batters would be hit if they dared to lean into a pitch. If they did, perhaps the practice of telling kids to try to be hit in certain circumstances would cease.
What got me going on this issue today was an e-mail I received from an angry parent. The parent had observed a game the night before in which a hitter came to the plate and was plunked. The parent noted that the girl's team appeared to be a very well coached, disciplined, aggressive squad which went on to win the "pretty large" tournament. The parent saw the kid apparently lean in on an 0-2 pitch but wasn't sure about the "lean in" part. In her next at-bat, the count was 0-1 when she again got plunked. But this time the ump called "strike" and the batter was not awarded first.
The coaches for the girl's team became "unglued" and an argument of almost ten minutes ensued. Later the kid came to bat again and was plunked yet again on an 0-2 pitch which the umpire called strike three, batter out. This time coaches were ejected after the ten minute argument. That's twenty minutes wasted over a by-the-book call as old as the game itself in a time-limited game in which one team apparently employed a strategy which is questionable at best.
Further, the team with the hit batter, the one which had argued for about a third of the allotted play time is well known in the area where this tournament was played. Lots of people were there, saw what happened, questioned the behavior of the team coaches and talked about it on the sidelines at length. This raises an even more important issue and one which this all is really about.
What is the saying? It takes a lifetime to build a reputation and an instant to ruin it? The problem is nobody involved in softball really likes the tactic of "taking one for the team." If you are watching some sort of championship, a kid for your team takes one and the result is a win, you may be happy for a while. But aside from this fleeting moment, nobody approves of or likes the idea of a batter leaning into a pitch as an offensive tactic. Some may admire the tactic within the setting of professional baseball. But nobody thinks it is a good idea and nobody likes it when youth sports team try it out.
This practice had a couple lasting effects. I'm sure that when any team plays against the team which employed the tactic, words are going to be shared with the intention of pointing out to umps that this team is know to do that. I wouild do that in a heartbeat, wouldn't you? Then I might just have my pitcher throw inside quite a bit to get their girls off the plate. And the we would try to get them out away. But that's a tactic for beating a team. That's mere gamesmanship. That's not a good lasting effect. Here's a better one.
The parents at this game talked along the sidelines how this team and its coaches employed the deliberate strategy of training their kids to get plunked. Then they went home and over the next weeks, will undoubtedly talk among their softball friends and acquaintances about the team. Some may point to a kid here or there who was permanently injured after being hit by a pitch and a general impression will be built within the softball community that the team which employed the tactic is to be avoided so long as those particular coaches are involved.
Oh, this may seem to be pie in the sky. Nothing happens that fast other than a tsunami. But the seeds have been planted. The reputations have been ruined.
The person who sent me the e-mail closed it by telling me what she would like to say to the coaches. She said:
"To the coaches of the other team I say you have done a great job at teaching the game, but how will they play the game of life in 10 years. Yes, coaches in one game you underminded, disrespected and tried to tear away all of the years of teaching and professionalism that women coaches have fought for (in this game). What a shame that you so readily think you are entitled to the respect that your female counterparts earned. What a shame that you will never have the opportunity to coach a girl (my daughter) who lives for this game but who would never disrespect it as you have."
I guess I would have to agree with that sentiment. Although the team is nowhere near (more than a thousand miles away) where I live, I wouldn't put my kid on such a team. I imagine most of the readers of this blog feel the same way.Labels: coaching, game strategy, rules, umpiring
Permanent Link: One For The Team
Tidbits
by Dave
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
I received a question today to which I gave a very brief answer. I recieve a lot of these, many of the same questions are asked multiple times, and I thought I would share a few since they often involve somewhat arcane questions which, taken as a whole, are likely to arise sometime during the course of a season.- Infield Fly Rule Overturned
One reader wrote in about an instance in which a pop fly was dropped by the second baseman after the plate umpire had invoked the infield fly rule. The umpires met and decided to overturn the infield fly rule because the ball actually went out beyond the infield dirt and fell in the outfield grass.
This should never happen. First of all, the infield fly rule occurs when, in the umpire's judgment, a fair pop-up can be caught by an infielder with ordinary effort, there are no or one outs, and runners are on first and second (or bases loaded). When called, the batter is automatically out and runners advance at their own risk. If the ball is caught, runners must tag up. If it is dropped, they need not return to base and instead can proceed to the next base if they wish.
The only circumstance which would change an initial infield fly ruling occurs when the pop-up drifts into foul ground. If, say, an infield fly drifts into foul ground and the ball is dropped, the batter gets new life - she is not automatically out. Because the invocation of the infield fly rule changes runners and fielders actions, it should never be overturned.
- When To Tag up
I received a question about a fly ball on which a runner tagged up. The complexity in the question occurred because the ball was initially tipped back into the air by one fielder and then caught by another. The runner tagged on the initial tip and proceeded to the next base. The fielder who caught the ball proceeded to throw to the base previously occupied in an attempt to lodge an appeal that the runner had left early. Umpires called her out because she had not tagged up after the ball was caught.
I am unaware of any rulebooks which diverge from the following though that is possible. The proper time to tag up occurs when the flyball is first touched. That is, a circus catch involving multiple players who in turn tip the ball in the air does not impact the appropriate time at which the runner must go back to the base and tag up. As soon as the flyball is initially touched, she can return to and then leave the base occupied.
- Pitcher's feet
Another question I get fairly frequently involves something about the pitcher's feet. These consist of several related and some unrelated issues. Here are the most frequent ones:
(A) Leap vs. Crowhop
Rather than give you the question since there are various iterations, here's my understanding of the two terms. A leap occurs when the pitcher's pivot foot leaves the ground. Most rulebooks have a requirement that the pivot foot remain in contact with the pitcher's plate until ball release. This requirement is met when she drags away from the rubber and maintains contact with the ground. Yes, that's an odd way of putting it but I believe that is the rule in almost every case.
A crowhop basically consists of a leap followed by obtaining a new point of impetus for the pivot foot. That is, the pitcher pushes off from the rubber, both feet are in the air, and she lands with the back foot before releasing the ball while also gaining a new pushoff point. These two are obviously somewhat related but are not the same thing sonce leaping involves and airborn foot and crowhopping involves a new pushoff point. The result, however, when called, is the same, illegal pitch.
(B) Two Feet on Pitcher's Plate / Backward Step
Several readers have written to inquire about whether the pitcher needs to begin with two feet on the rubber and/or whether she can take a backward step "before going into her wind-up." The answer is, it depends!
Basically, there are different pitching rules depending on the type of play. I don;t know all the rules by sanctioning body but I do know that some organizations allow pitchers to begin with one foot on the rubber and others require both feet to be on it.
High school rules can vary though I'm not entirely clear whether these vary from state to state. I believe they do. So any high school pitcher or coach ought to consult with their state's rulebook before proceeding. In my state, pitchers can start with one foot on the rubber and I have never seen an umpire call a pitcher for a badckward step.
Little League and Pony also permit a pitcher to start with one foot on the rubber but to my knowledge, Pony does not permit a pitcher to take any sort of backward step. I'm not sure about Little League.
Most other sanctioning bodies require a pitcher to start with both feet in contact with the rubber. I am not aware of any of these which tolerate a backward step. The NCAA is stricter than most, requiring half of each foot to be on the rubber. I have never seen a college pitcher take a backward step. I have observed many college pitchers slide their pivot foot across the rubber before striding and never seen an illegal pitch called for this. But from what I have observed, a pitcher who drags her foot across the rubber almost never keeps half the foot in contact during the drag.
(C) Walking into the pitch
Several folks have, over the years, written to complain about pitchers walking into their pitch. That would seem to be impossible when two feet are required to be on the rubber. In those instances in which only a single foot is required to be in contact with the rubber, I believe that foot must be the pivot foot. And I believe, walking into the pitch is usually prohibited. Yet I have seen this done many times in Pony and other play without there ever being a warning, let alone a call. I have seen it called in certain kinds of play but I have gone multiple tournaments with every pitcher walking in and not so much as a yawn from any umpire.
(D) Taking signs off rubber
Pitchers are supposed to either take a sign or mimick such an act before beginning the pitch. On some occassions, pitchers on my team have developed the habit of taking the sign behind the rubber, then stepping onto it, and then going into their windup. On some occassions, umpires have approached me privately and asked me to instruct our pitchers to take the sign from the rubber. Usually this is no big deal and nothing ever comes of it. But next game or tournament, our pitcher is again taking the sign from in back of the rubber! I would guess that I've seen more pitchers do this than take the sign on the actual rubber. And I've never seen an illegal pitch call due to this.
(E) Illegal Pitch!!!!
By far, the most frequent comment/question I receive involves someone seeing frequent bona fide illegal pitches not called. Often the writer sees one or two such illegal pitches called but could swear that every pitch thrown was illegal. I cannot account for this. That's been my experience as well. One reader noted that every pitcher on Team USA does something illegal on just about every pitch, gets called for the specific infraction on occassion, but does not repeatedly get called even though she does the same thing on every pitch. I can;t say that I saw the specific event every time somebody writes to me but I do understand what they are talking about. It is strange and I'm unclear what the meaning of this is. I think we've seen games in which the first several pitches or any particular string of pitches are called illegal in succession. I can't say that the pitcher ever changed the illegal aspect to the delivery. But for whatever reason, umpires have never in my experience continued to repeatedly call a pitcher for illegals until she changed or was removed. Draw your own conclusions.
(F) Single Ump
As a final comment about pitching rule enforcement, I am often confronted with questions about why an umpire did not call illegal pitch for some girl who was "obviously crowhopping." Often I ask the questioner whether there were one or two umps at the game. Most often there was one. To me, this calls into question the judgment of the questioner.
If you want to see the game from a single umpire's position, try it out. How would you like to be back there with some kid whipping the heavy ball at speeds requiring high school baseball reaction times, perhaps at a catcher of suspect ability, while also trying to call balls and strikes, get out to see close plays in the field, fielding various complaints from both dugouts, not to mention the peanut gallery, on some 100 degree day, for several hours at a time? Now with all that responsibility, the ump is supposed to also closely observe the pitcher's hands and feet? And make sure the two or three runners on the bases don;t leave early? Get real!
In general, if you have two umps officiating a game, the plate ump will usually keep his eyes on the pitcher's hands. The field ump will usually watch her feet. Unless something happens in which the pitcher makes some sort of mistake with her hands (brings them together twice or not at all), most illegal pitch calls will come from the field ump. Don't scream at a single plate ump even once because in your judgment the pitcher is crow hopping. Use a little common sense.
- Walked runner proceeds to second base?
One of my most embarrassing moments coaching softball occurred when one of my batters was struck by a pitch, jogged down to first, and I told her to go to second. We had a runner on third and when my runner took off, the catcher threw the ball to second. I started screaming at our runner on third to go. the umpire, barely maintaining his temper and sanity exclaimed, "coach, you can't do that on a hit batter." He was, of course, right. When the ball hits a batter, it's dead. I guess I had a mental hickup or something. I proceeded to dig a hole in the dirt and crawled into it.
Many folks starting out in travel ball or rec all-star play are initially unfamiliar with something called the "continuation play." basically, when a batter is struck with a pitch, yes, the ball is dead. But after a walk, everything remains live. So a walked batter can "continue" on to second base after a walk, with liability to be put out. This is often done in lower level, young play because, if the runner proceeding to second can induce a throw from the pitcher or catcher, the offensive team may be able to score a runner from third. I have seen this attempted at levels up to high school and 16U travel. But as girls arms become stronger and more reliable, it is a less common occurrence.
A friend once told a funny anecdote about one of the parents on a high school team. The fellow was one of those know-it-all types. When, during the course of a game, a batter was walked and she proceeded to second base, he began to shout, "she can't do that - the ball was already in the circle. That's not a proper interpretation and the umpire did not call her out. The father continued to shout until someone pulled him aside and explained the rule. He wasn't comfortable but at least stopped shouting!
Basically, when the ball is live and ends up in the circle, runners are permitted to continue to the next base without stopping or hesitation. If, after a walk for example, the ball arrives in the circle, it is still live but you can't get to first, jump off, and then begin juking in an attempt to get the pitcher to make a play on you. A runner can reach first base and immediately proceed to second. If the pitcher makes a play on her, all bets are off - the ball is now live. But if she ignores the continuation and does not make any sort of play, the runner on third cannot jump off again and begin juking. She should be called out for leaving base early.
The pitcher "making a play" includes any action which seems like she is making a play - specifically lifting the ball out of the glove into the throwing hand in a motion - that looks like she plans to make or fake a throw. In practice, if she does anything aside from lifting the ball into throwing position, including jumping around to position her body to make the throw, you will never see an umpire interpret this as making a play.
- Runner didn't turn to the right
I remember when I first got involved with fastpitch at any level, the coaches instructed girls to overrun first on grounders and then turn to their right so they couldn't be tagged out. That's technically wrong but really a minor error.
Some coaches want girls to run through the bag and then turn towards the fence to see if the throw got away. Many coaches want the runner to reach first and then immediately break down so as to proceed quickly to second if the ball gets away. They don't need the runner to see the ball hitting the fence - that's what base coaches are for. Instead, they want runners ready to advance should the opportunity arise. That seems entirely more reasonable to me. But that's besides the initial point.
A runner does not need to turn to the right to avoid being tagged out. No such rule exists. The rules require a runner overrunning first only to not make a motion towards second to avoid subjecting herself to liability to be put out. If she makes such a motion towards second, all bets are off. She is now liable to be put out and must get herself to some base.
I suppose that the misunderstanding about turning to the right or left involves some misinterpretation of a runner being put out. She motioned to second and got caught in a pickle or was otherwise put out. Somebody thought she had "turned the wrong way" and that's why they got her. But that's not what happened. What happened was she, in the umpire's judgment motioned as if going to second. There is no right way or wrong way to turn after overrunning first.
I think that's enough for one day. Have a great one!Labels: rules
Permanent Link: Tidbits
Rule In A Pickle!
by Dave
Monday, August 25, 2008
Substantially revised 8/26Ed writes in to ask a question about a questionable ruling his team suffered recently as follows:"Runner on 3B. After the pitch, she draws a throw from catcher to 3B. Runner breaks for home, and is caught in pickle. She heads backs to 3B, then home. On her way home, catcher is about 5 feet up the line, and in basepath, and doesn't have the ball. The ball arrives to the catcher a split second before runner runs into catcher, and the runner knocks the ball lose. Umpire calls runner out for making contact, and tells us she has to slide.
What should the runner do in this situation? If a) she slides she'll never reach home; b) she runs around the catcher, she's out of the basepath; and c) she runs into the catcher, she's out for interference.
These are 14 y/o girls, playing ISA rules."
Before we begin looking at this, I want to address an issue contained in Ed's question. One of the alternatives Ed proposes is "b) she runs around the catcher, she's out of the basepath." I know we've discussed this before but, in case you missed it, running in the basepaths is not a golden rule - all runners do not need to always be in the basepaths. The only time one should be called out for failing to remain in the basepaths occurs when a runner leaves the paths in order to avoid a tag.
In practice, this rule can cause you trouble, particularly in pickles (run downs). I have never seen an instance in which a pickled runner leaves the basepath and in which she was not called out specifically for that reason. I've never seen an instance in which the ump called her safe after she left the basepaths and then, when the defensive team argued the call, the ump told them she left the basepaths in order to avoid contact. So, I do not believe this is an effective alternative. Still, what else are we left with? If she slides, she will never reach home and definitely be out. So let's look at what did happen and how the rules should be applied.
The ISA rulebook is available online here: ISA rulebook, pdf file.
To begin with, as a general softball matter, fielders are not allowed to stand in baselines, blocking oncoming runners, unless they are in actual possession of the ball in most kinds of play including Pony, NSA, ASA, etc. That constitutes obstruction. However, ISA seems to be a little different than other bodies in regards to this issue.
ISA rules state:
"RULE 7 - BATTER-RUNNER AND RUNNER
Section 6 - Runners Are Entitled To Advance Without Liability To Be Put Out.
B. When a fielder, not in possession of the ball, not in the act of fielding a batted ball impedes the progress of a runner or batter-runner who is legally running the bases."
There is no precise discussion of fielders and runners involved in a pickle or a fielder in the act of catching a thrown ball being allowed to block a base here. Essentially, if a fielder impedes a baserunner while not in possession of the ball, it looks like she committed obstruction.
However, Rule 7-6, B(4) states:
"If a defensive player is fielding a thrown ball and the flight carries or draws them into the path of the base runner, then it would not be constituted as obstruction."
So, while a fielder apparently has no right to stand in the path of the baserunner while not in actual possession of the ball, should the throw cause her to get into the baserunner's path and cause her to impede the baserunner while trying to catch the ball, that is an exception to the general rule. In this case, it would seem that the catcher is in the runner's basepath, impeding her, while trying to catch a throw. The throw didn't draw her into the baseline. She was there anyway. But, it can be argued, the throw drew her into the basepath. That's the way the umpire would probably see it. But in this case, it turns out that doesn't matter either with respect to the call the ump did make.
A further examination of obstruction rules reveals something else. There used to be a provision in almost every rulebook which stated that a fielder "in the act of catching a throw" could not be obstructing a baserunner. Many, if not most, rulebooks did away with this a while ago. These rules were changed to require the fielder to be in possession of the ball or risk being called for obstruction.
I remember sitting in a Pony Nationals manager's meeting maybe a year or two ago and being told to go back to our hotels and discuss obstruction with our players. The UIC told us that a fielder must have actual possession of the ball or would be called for obstruction. He noted that the rule no longer contained anything about "in the act of catching a throw." He insisted this change would be rigidly enforced. Of course, the next day, that precise situation occurred and our runner was called out!
But ISA rules regarding obstruction contain the following:
"Rule 8 Base Running
Section 5 Base runners are entitled to advance without liability to be put
out:
B. When a fielder obstructs a base runner from making a base, unless the fielder is trying to field a batted ball, has the ball ready for a tag or is about to receive a thrown ball."
This provision is obviously inconsistent with what I just said and permits the catcher to be exactly where she was.
(Let me give proper credit here. When I first wrote the piece, I missed this aspect. I thought ISA had adopted the rule change to remove the "in the act of catching a throw" exception to the obstruction rule. My error was pointed out by Jeff who often writes to discuss points with me. Thanks Jeff.)
So, if the catcher was allowed to be in the baseline, if she couldn't be called for obstruction, because she was "about to receive a thrown ball," then I suppose we would have to look further and then ascertain whether the runner should maybe be called out.
In this case, the umpire claimed that the runner was out because "she didn't slide." It is fair to say that most of us have seen this call many times. I get confused by it however when I look to the rules. The general concept is what is known as the "collision rule." ISA rules on the issue are:
"Rule 8, Section 8 - The base runner is out:
T. When a defensive player has the ball and is waiting for the runner and the runner remains on their feet and deliberately, with great force, crashes into the defensive player; the runner is declared out. EFFECT: The ball is dead and all other runners must return to the last base touched at the time of the collision ..."
In the case we are examining, the umpire called the runner out because she didn't slide. The "runner remains on their feet" clause is the only place you are going to see any implied or other reference to a requirement to slide.
I get annoyed when umps invoke a "requirement to slide." It is always applied against me and never invoked in my team's favor!
I have heard the requirement to slide expressed many times. I have asked a number of umps about it and never received an adequate reply. Off the field, after games, what many of them will tell me is that sliding creates a presumption that the baserunner has done everything in her power to avoid contact - the collision rule does not operate then. They may refer to the rule noted above or another like it, depending on the type of play, and claim that it is their judgment whether the runner would have been out but for the collision. When you point out that the "on her feet" rule only applies when she is obviously out, you usually get shrugs and/or a desire to end the conversation. I have rarely seen a consistent application of this particular aspect of the collision rule. And, as I said, it semes like it is always applied against me, never for me.
A few years back, we had an argument with ASA umps on a force play at home. Bases were loaded, a grounder was dribbled back to the pitcher who fielded it, bobbled the ball slightly and then made a shuffle-pass to the catcher standing on the plate. The runner collided with the catcher who dropped the ball, possibly as long as half a second, maybe a little less, after she had caught and held it. The umpire called the girl safe at home. Somebody yelled, "she has to slide." That raised the hair on my arms and the back of my neck but not as much as the response from the baserunner who yelled to the crowd, "I don't slide!" This was a 16 or 17 year old girl who was a decent high school player and had at least 5 years of ASA tournament experience under her belt. The umpire had actually been a guy who had previously told me that runners have to slide always! Presumably they don't have to slide on force plays? Contact is permitted on those? Even when the runner is obviously out?
Clearly when the ball arrives to the base before the runner, is held, however briefly, by the fielder, and is dislodged as a result of the contact, the runner must be called out. That is precisely what the rules envision. Runners are not allowed to purposely dislodge balls. She would have (obvious to anyone besides the ump) been out but for the collision.
But I digress. The bottom line is the typical major league play in which the big guy rounds third, heads for home, the catcher awaits his arrival with ball in hands, and teeth gritted, is something we try to avoid in softball, something prohibited by the rules of the game. It may be great theatre in baseball but there are so many injuries caused by it, sometimes career threatening, that we should leave this sort of thing to other sports like roller derby. In fastpitch softball, you can't run down a catcher who is holding onto the ball long before you arrive.
However, more to the circumstances in the initial question, ISA rules also contain the following provision:
"Rule 7-6, B(5) If the ball, runner and the defensive player all arrive at the same time and contact is made, the umpire should not make the collision rule [interference or obstruction]. This is merely incidental contact."
Based on that, it seems pretty clear the umpire's ruling was erroneous. The phrase, when a runner is obviously going to be out and makes contact "while remaining on their feet," implies that a slide is necessary (though only when she is obviously going to be out). And in a pickle situation, it is hard for me to see that she would "obviously" have been out. "Obvious out" is in the eye of the beholder. Most umps fail to apply this conjunctive part of the rule. They want runners to slide, period.
Still, pickles should be different especially when fielders block the basepaths and umps are going to call runners out the moment they step outside the basepath. It is one thing if the throw arrives and the runner drives into her in an apparent attempt to knock the ball out. But when there is incidental contact, the collision rule should not apply.
In retrospect, not being at the particular game, I would guess the umpire in his or her judgment made the ruling based upon the runner staying on her feet reagrdless of the ball arriving at about the same time. He or she applied the rule different than it is expressed in the actual rulebook. But, I suppose that arguing the call, with rulebook in hand ,would not change the outcome except, perhaps, by making you observe the remainder of the game from the parking lot. I doubt if any dispassionate further analysis would have persuaded him or her to Ed's way of seeing things. Many umpires, regardless of the rules under which a contest is played, insist that there is always a requirement to slide.
When an ump invokes the rule where the runner is too far from home (or another base) to be expected to reasonably slide and still make it to that base, this really bothers me. And when such a ruling is made in a kind of play which specifically makes the collision rule inapplicable due to everybody coming together simultaneously, that really gets me juiced.Labels: interference, obstruction, rules, umpiring
Permanent Link: Rule In A Pickle!
Can I speak to the DP, please!?
by Dave
Monday, June 02, 2008
Harley writes in to ask:I have recently had the opportunity and time to watch the women's softball tournament on ESPN, and really enjoy the spirit of these young ladies. One thing I cannot figure out on my own is just what the designation DP stands for in the batting lineup. I realize she's hitting for the pitcher, so why is it not simply DH? After watching several, several games, listening more for the public address announcer's voice in the background of the television announcer's voices, I have yet to catch it. And of all the stats and info the TV announcers relate, not once have they actually said what DP stands for." OK, Harley. You asked the one question I least wanted to hear. I'm going to try to answer you but please realize that I do so kicking and screaming, against my will. It's not so much that I dislike the DP. It's more that I have tried to understand the rules several times without much tangible success. But I'll try once more for your benefit and the benefit of people who just don't get it.
For the record, I have used a DP just once, also against my will, because one of my coaches thought it would be a great idea. Then, when I needed to move players around, he freaked out, put a stop to what I was doing, then told me what I was about to do would have resulted in 3 of our players being disqualified for the rest of the game. I'm 100% sure he was wrong. He had no idea what he was talking about, regarding the rules pertaining to the DP and, not understanding them, should have refrained from trying to use the position. At the time, I had very little understanding of DP rules. Today I have only a slightly better understanding.
First of all, I think it is a good idea to stop oneself from trying to take every rule from fastpitch softball and try to draw an analogy to baseball rules about which we (men) are far more familiar. The rules of the two games, while substantially similar, are not identical, particularly with respect to DPs and DHs, but also with respect to some other rules as well.
One important difference between baseball and softball is, whereas a player leaving a baseball game at any time is not allowed to re-enter - he's done for the game, in softball, starters can be replaced and then re-enter the game for the person who replaced them, one time. The flex and DP being starters, they too can be substituted for and then re-enter the game. Also, in fastpitch softball, there is often an allowance (depending on type of play) for "courtesy runners" for pitchers and catchers. This mostly has nothing to do with courtesy but is a way, at least in the case of catchers, to speed up play. But I digress.
Put simply, the DP is the designated player. She bats for one of the other 9 players who is called the "flex." Under normal circumstances, the "flex" plays defense and the "designated player" plays offense. The DP need not bat only for a pitcher. In fact, in softball, pitchers are often rather good hitters and somewhat frequently, the flex is somebody other than the pitcher.
So, that's pretty simple. The DP is a DH for somebody in the lineup. That's pretty much the same as baseball. But it gets more complicated.
In NCAA play, the DP may go in and out of the game for any player (including the
flex), at any defensive position, any time and any number of times without it counting as a substitution for anyone except the flex. In other words, let's say your 2B is the flex, the person being batted for. The DP could go into the field for the first baseman one inning without there being any ramification to the batting order or a consideration that the first baseman has been substituted for. You could start the game with Sally being the DP for Jane, the 2B, and then replace Molly, the 1B, in the field with Sally, the DP. In effect, Molly is now your designated hitter since she's no longer in the field. But Molly is not now called the DP. She is still what she was, a defensive starter at 1B.
That may sound complicated but it is not. The DP, an offensive player, is allowed to play defense for any of the starters on the field. Initially, she may have been designated as the hitter for whomever was listed as the flex, the defense-only player, but it is very much possible to have the flex and the DP playing the field at the same time.
What is not possible is to have the flex player batting. I mean, she could bat but she is only allowed to bat for the DP. When the flex enters the batting order, she must hit wherever the DP is listed in the order, and this is a substitution. You could re-enter the DP in the batting order once since any starter can be substituted for once and then re-enter, but you cannot freely replace the DP with the flex, say if you wanted to run for the DP after she got on base.
Once the flex has permanently replaced the DP in the batting order, in NCAA play, the DP position is done for the game. For example, say the slow-footed DP gets on base her first time up in the second inning and you pinch run for her by using a bench player. That counts as a substitution, the player coming into the game is now your DP. Later, when the DP slot in the batting order comes up again, you decide to bat your original DP. This is a re-entry for the DP - her one free replacement and re-entry. The bench player who ran for the DP in the second inning is now no longer eligible to play in the game. She was not one of the original 10 starters. She was a substitute who entered, then left the game. The original DP has now used her one free re-entry. If she is substituted for in a "charged substitution" for a second time, she is done for the game. So if, she gets on base in the fifth inning and you decide to run the flex or anybody else for her, the DP position is now done for the day. You play 9 and bat 9 and now have just 9 starters in the game rather than the 10 you started with.
To sum up, at the very beginning of a game, use of the DP/flex results in there being 10 players in the starting line-up. The flex plays defense only and the DP plays offense only. But the DP can play defense at any time in replacement for any player in the starting 9 spots, including the flex, not just for the flex. The DP and flex could both be in the field because the DP has taken up a position for another member of the starting defensive team. There are no "substitution" ramifications when this happens unless the DP replaces the flex in the field. The DP could go into the field for anyone, other than the flex, at any time and any number of times. If you played a 40 inning game, you could, just for fun, have the DP play all the positions on the field, excluding the flex's position, for 5 separate innings without ever altering your lineup card. Remember that if the DP takes the flex's position in the field, that is a charged substitution.
The same is not true with respect to the flex coming to bat. The flex can only replace the DP in the batting order and such is a real, charged, substitution. The flex could bat for the DP and the DP return in the batting order but doing this is considered to be use of one substitution and re-entry. Whereas, you are allowed to substitute for a player and then re-enter her, this right disappears with respect to the DP as soon as you substitute for her in the batting order with the flex and then re-enter her.
I hope that is more clear than mud to you. I think it is an important distinction from baseball's DH where use of the DH in the field removes the DH position from the batting order and removes whomever was being batted for from the game, permanently.
The rules for DP can be rather intimidating. I wouldn't advise anyone to use it without understanding exactly what they wanted to do and the ramifications of those actions. This year one of my teams played against another in a national qualifier. Our opponent tried to use a DP because he wanted all 10 of his girls to play. So when he sent his tenth batter to the plate, I got very confused. I was calling pitches or I never would have noticed. I was expecting the leadoff hitter to come to the plate for a second time and somebody else came up. After that turn at-bat, our manager approached the ump and inquired about it. The coach of the other team had been completely confused by the DP/flex rule and thought it was just a nice official way to bat 10 kids. Unfortunately for us, the plate ump didn't understand the rules regarding batting out of order and failed to apply them properly! Oh, well!! I tried to steal an out but the ump wouldn't bite. We could have protested that call and won but it was just a seeding round game.
Moving back to my assistant coach from years past who implored me to use a DP/flex in an elimination game and then freaked out when I tried to make a substitution, let's said coach "Mark." What I tried to do, admittedly without any knowledge whatsoever with respect to the DP/flex, was to put my DP in the field while undergoing a pitching change and remove a player from the field, perhaps temporarily. DP goes to right field, RF goes to pitch, pitcher sits down and catches her breath. That is totally, 100% allowable. As I just got through telling you, the DP can go into the field at any time for any defensive player. The flex just cannot bat. The pitcher I had removed from the defensive side was required to bat when her spot in the order came up next. Nothing had happened, not even a substitution. Nobody was lost. The DP/flex remained intact.
Of course Mark, being a complete jackass-know-it-all, tried to convince me that he had just "saved me" from disqualifying 3 distinct players - I never asked him which three players he meant. Presumably, he thought we had lost the DP slot, the flex was now required to bat, and the pitcher was gone from the game permanently? Don't you love people who have no clue about certain subjects yet hold themselves out to be absolute authorities? That's the guy. And nothing can prevent him from shooting you in the back as soon as you turn away to attend to something else. But he had no idea what he was talking about with respect to the DP/flex rule and neither did I. I have since looked it up and suggest you do too if you ever plan to use it. And if you are only a casual observer, just watching the NCAA tournament - you watch softball for two weeks of the year because there is nothing else on TV - there's really no reason to learn anything about the DP. Just make sure that if you ever find yourself drafting up a softball lineup card, you don't use it. And if some assistant coach encourages you to use it, gather up a team of umpires - ones who have actually read the rules - and make him explain his understanding of the subject to the umps before you take any advice from him.Labels: rules
Permanent Link: Can I speak to the DP, please!?
Rule Clarification - Running Lane Violation
by Dave
Saturday, May 31, 2008
I'm posting this for the benefit of John Kruk and the others calling the UCLA vs Florida elimination game being broadcast right now. I've been over this territory before in a post called "You Make The Call" so I don't want to waste anyone's time rehashing the rules verbatim. Basically, a batter-baserunner running to first is required to be within the "3 foot lane" from a point 30 feet from first. Halfway to the bag, you have to be in the little lane created by the foul line and the other unexplained white line running parallel to it.
(Remainder of the original posting has been removed.)
Correction:
Originally I had posted here that because the chalk foul line is actually located in fair territory, if you run to first while landing your feet on the foul line, you might be considered to be running outside the 30 foot running lane between home and first. As one reader pointed out, that's not quite correct.
The NCAA is actually a bit more specific on the subject. The rulebook states: "The batter-runner is considered outside the runner's lane if either foot is in contact with the ground and is completely outside either line."
My understanding of a batter-baserunner being out of the base path to first has now been corrected. And I, like Kruk and the other announcers of that game, am completely confused by the ump's call.Labels: interference, rules
Permanent Link: Rule Clarification - Running Lane Violation
Foul! No, Fair! No, FOUL!
by Dave
Friday, May 30, 2008
I really hope you are watching the Women's College World Series on ESPN. You don't need me to tell you it is being broadcast live and that there are some interesting happenings. One of the most interesting things to me is the presence of John Kruk in the broadcast booth. Now that Kruk hasn't been beating my teams in MLB for a few years, I have to say I kind of like the guy. He knows diamond sports about as well as anyone short of Joe Morgan. (Yes, I know not everyone appreciates Morgan but I defy you to point me to someone who knows the game of baseball better than Joe.) And Kruk seems to genuinely appreciate the game of fastpitch softball. He said that's because there is no margin for error. You can't bobble a ball and get the out. And the girls are well schooled about throwing to the right base, perhaps more so than boys. There have been other happenings on the field of play and one of those spurred me to write today. The one play which most caught my interest was the game-changing one which cost Alabama, its first round game.
Before I get into it, let me say that AZ State is probably my favorite to win the WCWS. I don't know if they'll get there but they are my favorite because I like Katie Burkhart. She's a senior and while things never work out this way, I think it is her turn. Sure Tincher, Jelly, et al are seniors too and I cheer for them as well, but I just happen to like Burkhart. There's something about her style which appeals to me. Maybe its the cool exterior or the "I'm doing my hair from the prom" look she sports. For whatever reason, I hope she at least gets to the final game this year.
Nonetheless, I didn't like the call on that linedrive which grazed the Alabama third baseman's glove. I know it was close and almost nobody said, "gee whiz, that looked foul." There was an uncomfortable moment in the booth when they replayed it over and over again. You could almost hear them thinking "that should have been called foul." They noted that the ball seemed to pretty clearly make contact with the glove of the diving diminutive thirdbaseman. As Kruk said, it looked like it hit the laces. Obviously contact is contact and the focus then turns to where the glove was when the ball hit it. Actually, that's not quite right. The focus turns to where the ball was when it was touched.
Once this year, while watching a high school game, there was a pop-up down the first baseline and the 1B tried to make a play on it. No, this wasn't the one where there was runners interference that should have been but was not called. In this case, the fielder had a clean opportunity to make a catch but she failed to because she lost her footing or bearings. She drifted under the ball with plenty of time to spare, standing with both feet in fair territory. The runner was nowhere near her and no other fielder was poised to get in the way. As the ball came down, I think the wind made it drift back towards foul ground about a foot. She followed it as it fell to Earth but, at the last second, needed to reach more than she anticipated. The ball grazed off her glove and bounded into the fence along first. The ump signaled fair ball, the heads up runner moved on to second, and the play ended.
Fans and fathers on one side of the field, the defensive team's side, began yelling "that ball was foul." Fans and fathers on my side of the field, the offensive side right along first, yelled back "no, no, no, she was entirely in fair ground when she touched it." I don't like explaining this to the folks on my side, and I didn't at the time, but where the fielder is, is totally immaterial to the fair/foul call. The only issue is where the ball is when it is touched.
According to NCAA rules, a fair ball is "any legally batted ball that A) settles on or is touched on or over fair territory between home plate and first base, or between home plate and third base; B) While on or over fair territory, touches the person, attached equipment or clothing of a player or umpire." (Emphasis my own) Additionally, "A fair batted ball shall be judged according to the relative position of the ball and the foul line, including the foul pole, and not with respect to the position of the fielder (on fair or foul ground) at the time
the ball is contacted." And "A foul fly, line drive or grounder shall be judged according to the relative position of the ball and the foul line, including the foul pole, and not with respect to the position of the fielder at the time the ball is contacted."
I dare say that most rulebooks for either baseball or softball read similarly. The bottom line is the position of the ball determines whether it is fair or foul and the position of the fielder is only worthy of consideration in a play like last night's where the position of the fielder's gove tells us the position of the ball when it was touched. To drive this home a bit, think of a bunt or nubbed ball that comes to rest just off the line in foul territory. The third baseman or catcher, lunges, picks up the ball and throws to first from a position wholly in fair territory. The fielder's position did not turn a foul ball into a fair one. The same concept applies to line drives, pop-ups, etc.
Now, I could see last night that the call was an extremely tough one. I'm not second guessing the umpires judgment. What might I have called had I been the ump? I dunno. That's a pretty stressful situation. I probably would have made the same call. Actually, I'm pretty sure that whatever the right call was, I would probably have made the wrong one. So I'm not on my high horse today. I'm just questioning a call which very well may have changed the outcome of an important game while also clarifying the rules regarding when a ball is fair or foul.
My main reason for writing is really because of what I heard at that high school game. Actually, I have heard similar comments spoken at many other games of all levels. Whatever the reason, I don't think it is crystal clear to everyone that the position of the fielder is not important in determining whether a ball is fair or foul. The most common incidents of this happen when an outfielder drifts into foul ground and then has to reach back intio fair territory to catch a fly caught in the wind. Many times, people along the sidelines ask, "how can that be fair?" Sometimes the play is similar to the one at the WCWS where a fielder standing right near the line reaches into foul ground and fails to catch a hot shot. I have seen other umps call these kinds of balls fair when they are very clearly foul. But enough about the specifics and on to the more general.
My intellectual sense of the play last night is the ump did not carry the right prejudice into the play. What the heck do I mean by that? Let me explain.
In any human endeavor we must carry some form of prejudice, prejudgment, with which to color our decisions. That's true when we decide to make a turn in front of that car. That's true when we decide for whom to pull the lever in a political contest. And that's true in the most sophisticated stuff humans do every day.
In human legal systems throughout the history of mankind, there is always a recognition that the table must be slanted, no matter how slightly. In the US, we consider the rights of the defendant to emphasize that he or she is "innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt." In some other countries, the defendant is presumed guilty unless and until he or she can prove their innocence. Somebody has to carry the burden of proof. We don;t go before the judge and jury and say, let the other side prove its case and then we'll disprove it. Before we walk into the courtroom, the prosecution knows it carries the burden of proof. The same is true on the civil side of American justice. Somebody has to prove something and that somebody is established by law. The playing field is not completely level.
The same sort of prejudice exists within the scientific world. Joe or Jane scientist observes some phenomenon and postulates a cause and effect. She or he cannot claim the observation and postulated cause and effect as fact. it is merely recorded, reported and put out there for others to agree or disagree with. It the observation is repeated and the cause and effect not refuted, it rises to the level of theory. The theory sits out there for a very long time while other scientists attempt to find circumstances in which it doesn't hold true. No matter how many times a particular theory is found to be true, one instance of a false finding is enough to throw the whole ball of wax into doubt and make it false on an overall basis, unless and until something faulty is discovered in terms of the technique which found the theory to be false. I don't wish to stir up a political or religious debate but that's why we speak of the theory of evolution. We do not speak of the fact of evolution because, while elements of it have been proven true like the fact that genes mutate, the overall theory is still susceptible to disproof. The burden of proof is very high. Our prejudice is against the theory. In the scientific world, the burden rests clearly upon one making an assertion not on the rest of us to disprove the theory.
In the National Football League, after an official makes a call on certain types of reviewable calls, the head coach of one team can throw that stupid flag onto the field and challenge the call. The refs head to the little video booth, watch for an interminably long time during which broadcasters can show their stuff, usually making fools of themselves, and television stations get to air an additional commercial or two. Then they come out and make "the right call" which also about half the time happens to be different than the three ex-players, who watch the video over and over again many more times than the ref.s, predict! More importantly, when the ref enters the video booth, he enters it with the prejudice that the call already made on the field will be overturned only if there is indisputable video evidence that the call was wrong. In other words, the ref assumes the call on the field was the right one and can only overturn it with clear, convincing, indisputable evidence.
So, no matter what endeavor we are involved with, there exists a human need to have some degree of prejudice, some predilection towards guilt or innocence, some prior-to-the-play leaning towards fair or foul. In my humble opinion, that prejudice should be towards the status quo. That is, nothing changes unless and until I see affirmative evidence that a batted ball has landed fair. I'm not suggesting that an umpire walks onto the field thinking "show me" or every ball is foul until proven fair. But there just has to be some element of prejudice of some degree. You do not call a ball fair unless you actually see it hit fair ground. If you missed it, obviously you have to call something and that's where it gets kind of murky.
I believe we see instances at every game in which an ump just didn't get a good look. How else can we explain that pitch which was clearly in the strike zone being called a ball, that ball clearly resting on the line being called foul, etc.? Humans are not perfect. We blink. We take some period of time (more than we are aware of) to react. We see and think "strike" and then say "ball." How many times have you seen an ump go to pull his or her hands apart to make a safe call and then change in midflight to an out call. Even amongst the most schooled, experienced professional umpires in the world, mistakes are made, often because the ump just didn't get a good look.
Given that humans are not perfect and that even the greatest umpire on the planet can miss something important, the umps have to take the field with some sort of predilection regarding the calls they make. I believe this is manifested when, at the outset of a game, the strike zone seems to be rather smaller than it is later on. Whether they admit it or not, plate umps often carry a "show me" attitude into the early innings. Pitchers need to demonstrate that they can throw strikes before they get the corners. This is particularly true of rookie pitchers in the major leagues where young kids often have "control problems" because they have not established themselves yet. Later in their careers, they seem to be given the benefit of the doubt more often. But early on, they get pinched and often the element which makes or breaks their careers is the adjustments they make when they first get pinched. Sometimes even veterans get pinched unless they come into a game and demonstrate that they can throw strikes. After they do that, the zone can be expanded.
I am of the opinion that fair and foul batted balls should be no different than strikes except that you don't have those "expansion issues" nor the deliberate attempt to hit the corners. What I mean is, just as an overly broad or pinched strike zone can change a game, the determination of whether a batted ball is fair or foul holds the potential to change the outcome of a game, particularly in late innings. To me, a ball must be affirmatively in fair ground to be called fair. To me, if there is any material question, it should be called foul. And last night there were material questions. To me that ball had to be foul.
Let's look at a few salient facts before closing the book on this chapter. First of all, the third baseman was very close to the line when that ball was struck. She was completely laid out, in flight, when she dove for that ball. It barely grazed her glove. The ball landed several feet wide of the line, just past third base. Given that the contact between ball and laces was very slight, that contact could not have changed the trajectory very much. The actual point of contact was very quick, too quick to really get a look at it without benefit of multiple slow-motion replays. But the ball trajectory was more evident, providing a longer look. And the ball was clearly foul where it landed - had the fielder not made any contact, it would easily have been called foul. To me, you just can't call a game changing hit fair based on the available visual evidence.
Now add to the visual evidence that the umpire behind homeplate was off to the side of the line. She or he was behind the catcher, who was behind homeplate, and the foul line extends from the point of the back corner of the square part of the plate all the way to the foul pole. The ump was several feet from the foul line. The third base ump was in fair territory, also unable to look straight down the line. I didn't see which ump called the ball fair but it doesn't really matter. None of them had what you would describe as a good angle to the trajectory of the ball nor of the impact between ball and glove. So, not having a good view, what I'm saying is they have to call it foul.
This has been an interesting intellectual exercise. We sit here with rulebooks, videotape and rewind, replay, slo-mo buttons, and dare to question the split-second umps' judgment when they had none of those. We hear talk of using videotape in MLB games while making them a part of the game with respect to every blessed call would turn diamond sports into a tedious, boring spectacle. I am not in any way advocating a five minute commercial break on any protested judgment call. But I do think umpires should at least consider that before they enter the field of play, they need to have some sort of prejudice with respect to certain kinds of calls.
Last night was bang-bang. I would have made the wrong call in the moment. I'm not an ump. I believe that ball was foul at least in the sense that there was not clear and convincing evidence that it was fair. I believe the folks should have called it foul. But that doesn't help Alabama who must now win out of the losers bracket if they want to remain alive. It does give me more chance to watch Burkhart. And that's the way the ball bounces. That's this crazy game of ours.Labels: rules
Permanent Link: Foul! No, Fair! No, FOUL!
Breaking Views
by Dave
Monday, May 19, 2008
I have to admit that when the NFCA held their caucus (no not for the US presidential nomination) and decided to alter the strike zone a bit for NCAA games, I never heard anything nor paid much attention. But anyone who aspires to the next level ought to give this a good long think. And the powers that be in high school and youth fastpitch softball also should take this into consideration as we move forward.
First of all, the NCAA strike zone is now from the top of the front knee to the bottom of the sternum when the batter takes up her natural stance. Take a look at the chart at the bottom of this web page: NCAA Softball Rules Changes for 2008 for a visual aid. At first glance, this doesn't seem to be much of a big difference. Looking at the picture, it seems to be maybe two inches. But, in practice, this is a huge difference.
The reasons I feel this is a huge difference is because it moves the umpires focal point to anything at his eyes down to the knees to a spot below his normal eye level. Human beings, being fallible, will have a tendency to frame this new strike zone a bit lower than it might have been, that is, the actual strike zone in practice will be lower than the bottom of the sternum. As it was, umps hade a tendency to call strikes above where it was supposed to be. They didn't stop at the arm pits of a batter taking up her natural stance. They called anything near the shoulder a strike. So, I suspect the actual strike zone has shifted downwards more than the 2-4 inches which should result from moving it from the arm pits to the sternum.
I expect many of you watched some of the NCAA Regional action this past weekend. We recorded hours and hours of these games since we were at tournaments and then watched them a little too late into the night. While watching these games and many others in the weeks previous, several effects of the strike zone change struck me.
I would like to see a statistical analysis comparing run production 2008 vs. 2007 for the entire college game. I don't have that nor the resources to put together a proxy. But I'll go out on a limb and say that I believe run production was up this year. I may be wrong but that's my perception. I can't say that more homeruns were hit but the scores I saw were definitely bigger than in year's past. Before I ever heard anything about the strike zone change, I felt run production was up. I was actually a little shocked at the amount of hitting and run scoring there was at the college games I attended. Again, I have no statistics to back up my claim but those are my perceptions.
I believe this was the objective of the rule change. In softball as in baseball, folks have been eroding any advantage pitchers have in order to slowly change the game from one dominated by pitchers to one dominated by the offense. The same way we have watched a steady, though deliberate, gradual changing of the rules of the game to make more "hitter friendly." The pitchers plate was moved back to 43 feet from 40 in college and higher level youth and international play. We have begun to see a greater focus on the legality of the pitch including the amount of time a pitcher can stand there while a batter gets tighter and tighter, and to a lesser extent, pitchers remaining legal with their feet and hands.
(I still say the foot work rules are not enforced in a meaningful way but they are sometimes enforced as they were against Finch in the B-4-Beijing tour and several college pitchers at various times. My thinking is that since the same infractions were occurring over and over again yet the illegal pitch called no more than 2-6 times per game, the rule isn't being enforced in a meaningful way. Yet, if some umpire decided to really make an issue out of it, that would really kill a game. You'd have perhaps some of the greatest pitchers to ever have played the game breaking down in tears in the circle while runs were pushed across the plate by multiple, consecutive illegal pitch calls! &nbasp; We want hitting to be more important in the game but we don't want to go through transitional experiences like that to get us there.)
The objectives of ruling bodies has clearly been to inject more offense into the game. Nobody really makes any bones about it. There are still too many 1-0 games well into extra innings where the winning run scores primarily because of the ITB plus a misplayed ball or two in the field. We set our game length limits to 7 innings because we feel that is how long a game should be. The ITB is used because ... well ... this thing has to end sometime. I am one of those purists who loves a well pitched and played 1-0 game but even I have to admit that when only a handful of balls are put into play, I sometimes find myself confused, waking up in a beach chair with a terrible sunburn and bug bites at a field after everyone has long gone home. In other words, even I get bored when 21 outs are recorded, 17 of them by the K, or when the game is decided on an error in the 19th inning by some girl who really needs to get to a doctor's appointment and is getting nervous that she'll miss it if this blasted game doesn't end.
So I think the objective of shrinking the strike zone has to be about getting more offense into the game. Rule makers, in effect, wanted to neutralize the most dominant pitch, the rise ball.
I believe over the past several years (perhaps longer than that), it became clear that the riseball was the "Cadillac" of all pitches. Pitching coaches worked hard to teach girls to throw it at younger and younger ages. Even when they didn't specifically teach a particular girl an actual riseball, they were focused on skills which would eventually lead up to it.
On the whole, the most effective pitchers I observed (particularly in HS and college) all shared one thing in common, an effective riseball. I can't count the number of times I saw pitchers who relied upon the rise. There was one well known college pitcher who during her freshman year seemed to throw 60-80% rises with tremendous success. There were some extremely effective drop ball pitchers too (including obviously Texas' Osterman and Alabama's Stephanie VanBrakle) but I believe the vast majority of effective college pitchers relied upon a good riseball. Certainly many of the top strike-out pitchers like Abbott were riseball throwers. Osterman's success with breaking stuff cannot be disputed but the largest percentage of dominant strike-out pitchers used the rise.
You can argue that a riseball can be brought even with or under the sternum but this is not its most effective location. The most effective location is just above the armpits (the old upper limit of the strike zone). It gets into the eyes of the hitter and, at first, looks like a meatball that she is going to drive out of the park. Then as the pitch gets into the no-see zone (the last .15 seconds of its trip), it drifts up and out and there is no way to keep your hands on top of it. It is a swing and miss pitch except on those rare occasions you can make contact with it and pop it up to the infield.
Yes, an effective riseball pitcher can throw it in the zone as well as out but if the thing is thrown too low, it truly can become a meatball and end up on the wrong side of the outfield fence. And the riseball thrown under the armpits was always a set-up pitch, a set-up for the one thrown just above the zone. You brought a rise into the zone say on 3-0 and then threw one above it on 3-1, then maybe again on 3-2 after the batter swung and missed on 3-1. It also complemented an effective screwball since batters might misread the rotation and react to the screw only to swing and miss as it rose up and tied up their hands.
So the principal advantage of the rise has historically been as a swing and miss, just out of the zone pitch. And moving the strike zone downwards is a way to neutralize that particular pitch. One of the observations which surprised me while watching this year's NCAA Div I Regionals was the transformation of Jelly Selden from a riseball pitcher into a dropball one. Jelly can certainly still throw the rise but she doesn't necessarily rely upon it. She throws drops in and out, mixes in other pitches including the rise and she gets girls out with the breaking stuff. I believe we will see more of that from all college pitchers in the future.
I totally get that this change will not completely erradicate the riseball from the game. You can get a girl to swing at a high one regardless of where the strike zone is. I assume we will continue to see efective rises thrown on say 0-1, 0-2, 1-2 counts. But I don't expect to see its use be as dominant as it has been in the past. That is because any good batting coach, who has many empirical observations in which the rise is called a ball, will eventually begin working with his or her hitters to lay off the pitch, even at the risk of being punched out by umps with an over-extended zone. Eventually college hitters will lay off the rise the way many do the low thrown change-up.
This development has many far-reaching implications for high school and youth-play girls who aspire to play at the next level. For one thing, pitchers are going to need to work the low, breaking stuff more. It is no longer going to be in a pitcher's best interests to go through youth with a killer fastball and change while having other pitches but not having relative command of them, then as a young high schooler, develop a rise.
Pitchers who want to get the attention of college coaches are going to have to have good breaking stuff and laterally moving pitches. The softball strike zone is still fairly broad and pretty low. Who knows, those may be the next things to go? But for now, merely grazing the sides and bottom of the zone have become the most effective pitches. And a pitcher is more likely to succeed by "expanding" the zone laterally rather than trying to push it up, at least in the college game. Sure there will be fewer Ks as badly hit balls will be the sign of a pitcher who is on. And as the riseball is made more and more ineffective by the confluence of umps not giving the pitch and batters being trained to lay off it, the pitchers who will dominate the game going forwards will be throwing breaking stuff.
As a result of this development which I think will take place over the coming years, batters will, of course, have to adjust to the gradual change in the pitching they see. I don't believe I will get an argument that some girls are better low ball hitters than others just as some are better high ball hitters. You can work to change your swing but some girls physical make-up puts them in a better position to hit lower balls than others. The girls whose bodies make them better high ball hitters will have to adjust. And the world of hitting instructors will also make the adjustment. As another aside, I believe it is just possible that we'll see further inroads made by those who teach more of what is referred to as "rotational hitting" mechanics in which the bat head is often held below the hands - something you can't do when facing a riseball pitcher. But I'm getting way ahead of myself. I don't want to expand the restriction of the upper strike zone quite that far.
The bottom line in all this is what are high school aged players going to do about it? I expect pitchers will work the breaking stuff more and hitters will change their swings to adapt but the major consideration which I think must be looked at is the way high school and youth umps call the game. We conduct neither youth tournaments nor high school games in order to provide talent to the colleges. The largest percentage of age group and high school players will never set foot onto a college diamond. We don't need to alter their game in order to prepare the few college prospects to play at the next level. Yet, the history of all games begs the question of why we would want the thing played differently below 18 than it is above. In baseball, the game is essentially the game, in terms of rules and the way it is played, from say 14 years old onwards. The same is true of most, if not all, other sports. Why should we have different rules between HS and college just for girls softball?
While we don't want to change the game only so the colleges have a small percentage of kids prepared to play, there is no reason to penalize the kids who will move on in order to keep the HS and youth games stagnant. If the lowered strike zone is good enough for the college game, it should be good enough for every level of competition from say 14U up. And if the rule changes could make for more offensive production in games at these age levels, why not adopt them? What are the affirmative reasons to make the game different for these slightly younger age categories?
Having said this, I just realized that perhaps the HS strike zone has already changed but I did not bother to check that. And even if it did, it isn't being enforced properly, at least not in my state. I've been to dozens and dozens of high school games already this year with hopes of seeing maybe another dozen in the coming weeks. HS umps are definitely still giving the high rise continued importance in that game. Several times I have had to wonder if the strike zone ended at the chin, nose, eyes, or top of the helmet of the batter! I have had the opportunity to observe a few senior pitchers who have already signed NLIs as well as many juniors who may this July and several underclassmen who have either already gotten the attention of college coaches or may this summer. Most of these kids, not all, at least in their high school personas are riseball pitchers.
I cannot say with any certainty that high or low ball hitters have been the focus of college coaches but I have to wonder if this might be a consideration going forwards. If they start looking to recruit dropball and sideways movement pitchers, you really have to wonder if simultaneously they'll be looking to pick up low ball hitters.
Well, I hope this piece provides you food for thought. Obviously, there is, as always, a fair amount of my own personal opinion here. I have to say that I'm a little late to the picnic. This rule change has been out there the whole college season. I didn't know about it until recently. I thought I saw more offensive production in colleges this year but I really didn't know why. I also thought I saw fewer riseballs being thrown and, again, wasn't sure why. Maybe I'm just making a mountain out of a mole hill but I suspect my observations are right. I don't mind if you disagree with me and as always, if you do disagree, please feel free to write. The only thing I will warn you about is, if you write, I just may publish your opinion!
Scott from Texas writes in to offer his opinion:
Baseball moved from pitching advantage to hitting advantage because scoring meant more fans. I think in general that has proven true. As a dad like yourself with two pretty decent softball girls, I have fallen in love with the game and wish it had more of a fan base. So I would love to see the strikezone get a bit smaller and generate some more scoring. We also have a hard time keeping girls interested in the game, because unless you are the pitcher or the catcher, not a lot of action. Hitting is the funnest part of the game and it would go a long way to keep girls playing this sport instead of soccer or basketball.
I say this as a pitcher's dad as well (and travel ball coach). My daughter isn't old enough yet to pitch the rise ball - she is just 12. However, we are ahead of the curve on the drop and curve and screwball - most of her peer pitchers are fastball/change up pitchers. I love that she can spin the ball and I think it makes her game a ton of fun, trying to outwit her batting opponent. I get really bored with pure power - I'm more of a Greg Maddux fan. Most of the pitching coaches I've interacted with are teaching power pitching and I also believe it leads to injuries that are unnecessary, particularly for the age that we are in.
So all in all, I believe the change would be good for this game. I am probably reaching a bit, but it could also be a formula that re-instates it as an Olympic sport. Right now, what chance does the rest of the world have against the US and Japan with the pitching as dominant as it is?
Labels: hitting, pitching, rules
Permanent Link: Breaking Views
Facemask - 15 Lash Penalty
by Dave
Monday, May 05, 2008
I heard a story about one of those games in which a town rec/all-star team lured a travel team to come scrimmage them. At this game, the travel team infielders all wore the "gameface" face mask. I think we see these worn in competitive fastpitch more and more frequently and that is a good thing. But at the game in question, a mother from the rec/all-star team began yelling to nobody in particular (perhaps the umps) on the field, "they can't wear that - they're not allowed to wear catcher's masks in the field - that's illegal!" To this woman and anyone else who just has never seen this equipment, I feel comfortable saying you are rather wrong. This is but a simple piece of safety equipment. It is not intended to intimidate or otherwise distract your daughter when she is at bat. I am unaware of ANY rule prophibiting their usage and I suggest you find out more about this device as you may save your own daughter some significant pain. But this isn't really why I am writing about this today. The reason I am writing about it is because some folks, who should know better, do not.
For the second time this young season I heard a story about a game in which an umpire wanted to prohibit girls from wearing gamefaces. Ultimately he relented and permitted the girls to play with them on. But he suggested that they were not regulation gear and nearly made them take the devices off. He asked the coaches of the team wearing them to show him in the rulebook where it says these are permitted. That's beyond ridiculous.
Show me in the rulebook where it says girls can wear sunglasses. Show me in the rulebook where it says girls can wear underarmor. Show me in the rulebook where it says girls can wear cups. Show me in the rulebook where it says gilrs can have decals placed on their regulation helmets. Show me in the rulebook where it says girls can wear knee braces.
The fact that the most recent games in which the idiot ump was going to prohibit the wearing of gameface was a friendly was somehow lost. There was no "rulebook." There was the notion that the friendly was played generally under ASA rules except for teams being allowed to bat their whole lineups, etc., etc. So which precise rulebook the idiot was referring to is anyone's guess.
I believe the coaches must have responded with something like, "OK buddy. We're going to play with these on and if you don't like it, you can call the game, award it to the other team, and then go explain to the site director about what you did. The site director would likely have torn him a new one.
As I said a moment ago, I think we see more girls wearing game faces each year. That's true in age group ball, high level ASA play, high school and even NCAA. I will not be shocked to see a few of these at the Summer Olympics though that may be a little unlikely. The Olympic players tend to be older-style players who shun such things as face masks.
This simple, light-weight protective gear has a lot of benefits and few, if any, drawbacks. I do know that a few girls, including my own, find that they obstruct the vision a bit. My older kid won't wear one unless and until everyone else around her wears one. The younger one wears one some of the time but she doesn't when she needs to wear a visor due to sun glare or when for whatever reason, she struggles to keep the thing in place on her face.
One time, an ump asked me if it would be OK if I allowed my younger daughter to take it off and I complied. We were appealing to a higher authority, my daughter's rather strong will! That ump doesn't like the thing anyways and hates to see kids get upset when they struggle with a piece of equipment. His own daughter doesn't wear one when she plays school ball but that's her choice. She's even stronger willed than my daughter. Still, he is smart enough to realize there is no prohibition against them.
The reason I am writing about this today is it boggles my mind that any umpire would be so monumentally stupid as to presume to know that the rules prohibit wearing of a safety device like this. I'm shocked to learn that there might be two idiots out there. It is possible that the two stories which came to me involved the same imbecile but I can't say for sure. I just want to say in the bluntest terms possible that while there is no rule I am aware of which prohibits a little girl from wearing something intended to keep her unharmed while she is engaging in the activity of fastpitch softball, there is a rule against anyone so stupid that they make up the rules as they go being paid to officiate a game. I call on the loser umpire to give any money earned from calling these games back to the organization which paid him since, quite obviously, he did not earn his pay.Labels: injuries, players, rules, umpiring
Permanent Link: Facemask - 15 Lash Penalty
You Make The Call
by Dave
Sunday, May 04, 2008
One of my favorite "shorts" on televised NFL football games is the one where they show you a play and "you make the call." I wish I had softball video for the following but I don't. Let's see if my words do it justice.
Batter hits a pop-up along the first baseline and runs towards first. First baseman calls "I got it" and attempts to make a play. Batter-baserunner continues towards first running hard right on the baseline, contacting the chalk with each foot in sequence. Batter-baserunner approaches fielder still stepping on the chalk with each foot. First baseman, standing completely in fair territory, reaches up to catch the pop-up but as the two players come together, there is a moment during which the batter-baserunner appears to make some slight contact with the fielder who, about a quarter to a half second later drops it into fair territory. Immediately following the play, there are tons of catcalls from fans along both sidelines. On the defensive team's side, folks yell "interference!" On the offensive team's sideline, they yell "she was in the baseline!"
Just to properly set the stage - this is a pretty big high school game, under the lights, on a Saturday night. Emotions are very high. Both teams have filled their respective benches with JV players to support the varsity girls. Both benches are very loud. Additionally, there are 200-300 fans in attendance. Every major player in the county is here watching. There has been yelling on every pitch beginning with the first one. Every call has been questioned by someone. Every "out" has raised screams of pain from one side or another. To this point of the season, you have not officiated a game which is anywhere near as intense as this one.
Both teams are relatively young. There aren't a half dozen seniors starting. Yet almost every girl starting on both teams has played this game at the highest levels. At least half these girls have played ASA Gold or showcase ball before college coaches. The other half will probably do so within the year.
There will not be many runs scored here. Baserunners will come at a premium. There may be as few as a half dozen baserunners for the entire game for both teams combined and this very well could go into ITB. That's not to say these girls can't hit. Several in this game are hitting at, near or above .500 against other teams.
The pitcher for one team has allowed no earned runs this year. The pitcher for the other team sports a sub-1.00 ERA and hasn't given up a run in recent memory. Both girls are throwing in the 60s with good movement and location on their pitches.
Small ball is coming into play as the two teams try desperately to get a runner on and move her along. Whichever team gets a runner past first, over to third and across the plate first, is going to win.
These conditions should not impact your call, but let's face it, stress is stress and human beings are human. Whatever you decide to call, somebody is going to be unhappy. If you make a bad call, people will be talking about it for years and asking you about it for just as long. The next time you make a questionable call in any game, somebody there will have seen or heard about the call you made here. They will inevitably remind you of tonight's call. Now:
You make the call!
We'll make this just a little easier (if that's possible) by providing some possible considerations. You could call:
1) Obstruction by the fielder who was blocking the baseline without having possession of the ball.
2) No call - the batter-baserunner stayed completely in the baseline and, therefore, had a right to be where she was. She couldn't have interfered because she was making an ordinary effort to just get to base while not leaving the baseline.
3) Interference by the runner who did not allow the fielder to make a play.
4) No call because the runner either did not make contact or made such light contact that it couldn't have impacted the fielder's attempt to make a play. Alternatively, you might think contact did occur but that the fielder either had no chance to make the play or the runner was so far beyond the fielder when the ball came down that no call should be made.
I won't go straight to the call the ump actually made. That would be too easy, totally unsatisfying, and provides no instruction. Instead, let's analyze what happened on the play and how that might be viewed within the context of the rules of the game.
First of all, the notion that a fielder can obstruct a runner while in the act of fielding a ball is wrong. A fielder can obstruct a runner while not in possession of the ball or while awaiting a throw but not while she is attempting to make an initial play on a batted ball. The first baseman has a right to make the play whether she is in fair or foul ground.
Secondly, a baserunner has almost no more right to be in the baseline than the batter has to be in the batter's box. Having said that, I realize perhaps some of you do not realize that the batter does not have a right to the batter's box. The rules read something like the "batter's box is not a sanctuary." In other words, if there is a wild pitch or passed ball while there is a runner on third, the batter must get out of the way and permit the defensive team to attempt to make a play. She cannot simply stand in the box and then, when she is called for interference, claim "but I was in the box." Well, I guess she could but the ump won't agree.
A few years ago, I observed a play on which a runner from second stole third, the catcher threw towards the base, but the ball hit the batter, standing like a statue in the box, in the helmet and bounded out of play, thereby allowing the runner, now at third, to advance to home. I didn't understand the rules when I observed that play and thought the umps had made the right call. In the newspapers, the batter noted that long ago she had learned when there is a play going on while she is at bat, she should stay in the batter's box and that way she can't be said to have caused any interference. I assure you she is wrong. The batter's box is some sort of absolute sanctuary.
The batter has a duty to get or stay out of the way of fielders making a play. The only benefit of staying in the batter's box is that the umpire more or less has to read the batter's mind and determine if she is intentionally interfering. Intention has bearing in this case and no other. In most other types of interference including our case today, it can be "intentional or unintentional." So our runner to first's intentions don't bear any weight at all.
Runners are not really "entitled" to the baseline. The baseline is an area a baserunner cannot leave while attempting to avoid a tag but it is not the exclusive domain of the offensive team. For instance, let's say there is a runner on first and the batter hits a groundball at the second baseman. The runner from first, advancing towards second as she must on the play, is not entitled to the baseline. If the fielder is standing in the baseline awaiting the ball, the runner must allow her to make the play. If she contacts the fielder before the ball gets there, she will be called for interference. If, on the other hand, she goes around the second baseman and gets past her before the ball gets there, you will never see her called out for "leaving the baseline."
Let's think about this for a second. When have you ever seen a baserunner called out for leaving the baseline. My guess is the only time you have ever witnessed that occurred where there was a tag play on the runner. For example, let's say you are at a field where there is no outfield fence and the batter hits one hard in the gap. She ends up legging out a homerun. As she approaches first, she will most likely balloon out her running path well beyond the "running lane" (we'll get to that in a minute), turn and head for second. As she approaches second and then third, she will again balloon out, usually well outside the baseline, round the bag and head for the next base. When have you ever seen an umpire hold up his or her hands and announce that the batter-baserunner is out for leaving the baseline? It doesn't happen and it shouldn't happen.
The only time the runner should be called out for leaving the baseline occurs when she does so to avoid a tag or to interfere with a play. Most rulebooks I have consulted only refer to the baserunner being out for leaving the baseline "to avoid being tagged out by the fielder." Conversely, most rulebooks also provide, the baserunner is not out when she "runs behind or in front of the fielder and outside the base line in order to avoid interfering with a fielder attempting to field the ball."
So, had the batter-baserunner ballooned out on this pop-up, she should not have been called out for running outside the baseline. Any ump who would call a runner out for leaving the baseline when she did so to avoid contact would be ... um ... wrong. Runners are obligated to go above and beyond to avoid contact. That's within the letter of the rulebook for all competitive softball. It is also the virtual embodiment of the spirit of the rules of the game.
There is a related play which I think we should discuss, however briefly. Last year, in a MLB game, the New York Yankee's Alex RodrÃguez was running towards third on an infield pop-up. As he approached the third baseman, he supposedly said something, exactly what has been questioned extensively. Some said he yelled "I got it" whereupon the third baseman backed away from the play and the ball fell to Earth. A-rod denies he said "I got it" and instead said something else which, while not overtly intended to confuse the defensive player, was kind of, sort of intended to confuse him. I believe A-rod also added something like "hey it's a part of the game, I can't tell you how many times I have gone for a pop-up and somebody yelled something like that."
I don't know MLB rules on the subject but I do know absolutely that you can't do something similar in a fastpitch softball game. The offensive team is not allowed to do or say anything which is intended to confuse the defensive team. For example, a base coach, baserunner, or player in the dugout cannot yell "I got it," "ball, ball, ball," or "miss it" in an attempt to get the fielder to make an error. In fact, fans cannot do that either. It is interference and such a play should not stand. That's because the way the rules are currently worded, interference is defined as "the act of an offensive player or team member which impedes or confuses a defensive player attempting to execute a play." For more on what fans cannot do, see rules under "fan interference."
So the baserunner is not "entitled" to the baseline and there are strict limitations on what an offensive player, coach or even fan can do when a batted ball is in the act of being fielded. What we're left with is either interference or no call.
Before I go on, let me say that generally any contact, no matter how light, is usually considered cause for an interference call and well it should be. The fact is light contact is easily as distracting to a fielder as a runner knocking her down. The reason is the fielder, anticipating contact and then feeling what seems like the first touch of what is going to be a collision, necessarily believes she should go into personal protection mode.
There really is no such thing as slight contact. There is such a thing as incidental contact but that says nothing about the intensity of the contact, rather it refers to contact that couldn't really be avoided. In this case, I told you the batter-baserunner "appears to make some slight contact." Degree doesn't really matter so the question is whether there was any contact at all or she otherwise interfered with the fielder.
Also, I told you the batter-baserunner's feet were stepping on the chalk baseline as she headed for first. I don't see it discussed very much but there is something we should at least mention. Many people see the lines on the field and wonder what some of them are about. There is the coaches box which usually does not contain a coach. The rules say they should stay there but seldom are these rules followed by base coaches. Then there is that funny, seemingly out of place line which goes from first to about halfway to home in foul ground. Nobody seems to fully understand what that is for.
I'm not being snotty or self-righteous here. It's just my experience that most people I have discussed this with don't seem to understand what that line is supposed to be for. That line is referred to as "the three foot line." In baseball, I think it is called the "restraining line." The line is drawn exactly three feet from the first baseline, beginning exactly half the way from home to first. Normally the legal baseline for a baserunner or batter-baserunner is the area extending out three feet on either side of a direct line between bases. the one exception to this rule is the area thirty feet from home along the first baseline. There the batter base-runner must stay in foul ground on her way to first - she must stay between the lines drawn, the foul line and the "three foot line." if she leaves that and is hit by a throw, say from catcher to first, she can and should be called out for interference.
As a minor point, I cannot exactly find this next small aspect exactly discussed anywhere but I arrive at my opinion via deduction and, in the end, I believe it won't matter anyway. I told you that the batter-baserunner was running down to first with her feet landing on the chalked baseline. The question is, was she within the "three foot line" or not. I haven't seen this precise topic discussed but let's start out by saying the foul line is not really the "foul" line. It is clearly the "fair line." That is, the chalk or whatever material which makes up the so-called "foul line" ir in fair territory. My understanding is the running lane to first is supposed to be exclusively in foul territory. So technically, the runner was out of the baseline! But I don't think this matters because whether she is in or out of the baseline, whether she is where she is allowed to be or not, has no bearing on whether the call should be interference.
It is also irrelevant whether the batted ball dropped into fair or foul territory. The fielder has just as much right to field a foul pop-up without interference by the batter-baserunner as she does a fair ball. Had the first baseman been standing on the bag or straddling it while trying to make a catch, the baserunner could not step onto or slide into the bag and then complain that she didn't interfere because she just has to get to first if the ball is dropped. The fielder has right of way, if you will.
I need to tell you what the ump called in this case and then see if I can bring this to a conclusion. First of all, the ump made no call and the play was allowed to stand. the defensive coach screamed his lungs out at both umps and then left the field. The field ump who was the only one who could make the call, said, "I did not see any contact." At the time, everyone, including yours truly, pretty much shut up and accepted this explanation. But in hindsight, this isn't right. There is no place I can find where contact is a necessary element of interference. Contact would require a call of interference but I do not believe the absence of contact dictates no call of interference.
As we said, the batter-baserunner was possibly not running within her lane since she was in fair territory. And she did not make any attempt to avoid interference. She could have run 5 or 10 feet to the side of the first baseman and completely avoided any chance of being called for interference. She didn't and I believe based on these facts alone, interference should have been called.
Just to conclude this discussion, let me tell you that I was in a better position than the field ump. I was standing about 15-20 feet away from the first baseman, obviously I was off the field and out of play. There was contact made between the batter-baserunner and the fielder. In fact, there is no question that this constituted interference, none whatsoever. I was a little shocked that the ump did not see the contact. It wasn't all that slight. But be that as it may, no runs scored in that half inning so the play made no difference. Still, I would advise coaches to teach their runners about this pretty arcane aspect of the game and tell them not to worry about running outside the baselines when avoiding contact with a player making a play on the batted ball, at least within reason!Labels: baserunning, interference, rules, umpiring
Permanent Link: You Make The Call
No Evil
by Dave
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Do you know the classic image of the three monkeys, one with hands over eyes, a second with hands over ears, and the third with hands covering mouth? I'll add an additional one but I'm just taking poetic license. I believe that whether you are a fan, a player or a coach, you must think umpires:
A) don't know the rules (hear no evil);
B) know the rules but do not see these things as infractions (see no evil);
C) know the rules and see the infractions but are reluctant to make these calls because nobody among their cohort is calling them (speak no evil); or
D) know the rules, see the infractions, are perfectly willing to make the calls, but interpret the rules as intending players to not take an advantage and absent any such advantage, see no reason to make the calls (think no evil).
What I'm getting at is the rules regarding the pitcher's feet. My take on this is selection D. I believe umpires know the rules well, can generally see fine, are never unwilling to make a call where they see an infraction, but do not see pitchers gaining an advantage. The bottom line is they aren't making the calls.
In my corner of the world, most people aren't all that knowledgeable or sure about the overall rules concerning pitching but they seem to feel comfortable about those regarding the pitcher's feet. They see pitchers doing something in games and they cry foul. When nothing is done about it, they first blame umpires for not making the call. Then they reason that just the pitchers in our state do these evil things. They sometimes go so far as to claim that once our pitchers travel outside the state, they'll get caught by the real umpires enforcing the real rules and these pitchers will fail, fail, fail. They act so superior and claim that the reason why softball from our state doesn't have a better reputation has something to do with the failure of local pitchers to pitch legally and umpires to call them in such cases. But the facts remain our pitchers do travel outside the state, don't seem to get called an inordinate amount of times for illegal pitches, and a good portion of them are successful at high levels.
Let me explain a little bit more about the issue I am looking at. In general, a pitcher must stand on the rubber with both feet before taking a signal from the catcher. In Pony and some other sanctioning bodies, one foot (the pivot foot) on the rubber is OK but the landing foot must be behind the rubber. In NCAA play, the pitcher must keep one half of her pivot foot in contact with the rubber when taking the signal. Then the pitcher must keep her feet in contact with the rubber until she begins the pitch. Many pitchers, particularly NCAA pitchers, drag their pivot foot in from the edge of the rubber to a point closer to the center or all the way over to their landing foot before stepping off and striding. During the stride, obviously the pitcher can take her landing foot off the rubber as she steps forward. At this point, the pitcher's pivot foot is supposed to remain "in contact with the rubber" but this is ruled to be the case when she drags the pivot foot away from the rubber after pushing off and before release.
If a pitcher lifts her pivot foot off the rubber during her windup (when she might be dragging it along the rubber), this is illegal since she did not keep in contact with the rubber. If she pushes off with the pivot foot and it leaves the ground (does not drag), this is called a leap and is illegal. If she pushes off with the pivot foot, it goes into the air and re-lands to a new point of impetus - she pushes off from the new spot, this is called a crow hop and it is also expressly illegal. Another related infraction along these same lines occurs when the pitcher takes a slight step forward with the pivot foot before striding and gains a point of impetus in front of the rubber. This isn't a crow hop but it is illegal since the pitcher did not remain in contact with the rubber and has gained a new point of impetus that is not in contact with the rubber.
Another though somewhat unrelated common infraction occurs when a pitcher takes the signal from behind the rubber and then walks into the pitch. You usually see this in early age groups like 10U or 12U. You don't normally see anything like this in ASA ball since it is mighty difficult to walk into a pitch and begin your wind-up with two feet on the rubber! Some girls continue to take signals from behind the rubber as they age but generally umpires do a good job of preventing pitchers from walking into the pitch since this provides an obvious advantage - pitchers throw somewhat harder when they are allowed to walk into a pitch. And as girls get older and play ASA ball, they must stop taking signals from behind the rubber and walking into the pitch or they must give up pitching because it will almost always be called illegal.
The rules infractions I am looking at today are only concerned with leaping, actual crow hopping, and deliveries in which the pitcher pushes off from a point slightly in front of the rubber. Also, when I talk about umpires not calling these infractions, I mean all umpires. Pitching rules in high school can be different from those in college, ASA and ISA. But as far as crow hopping and leaping are concerned, they are pretty much identical. Yet you almost never see an ump call illegal pitch for something the pitcher is doing with her feet.
As I said, many near me claim that this is because only pitchers in our state are doing this. I beg to differ. I have made a close examination of numerous NCAA pitchers as well as the entire Team USA pitching staff. I defy anyone to closely examine Jennie Finch, Cat Osterman, Monica Abbott or similar caliber pitchers and show me a full game's worth of pitches in which all are fully legal in terms of their feet. I say I defy anyone because I have clearly seen these Olympic pitchers and the replacement players who did not make the team roster all make repeated infractions.
It would be akin to picking low hanging fruit to say they stride outside the 8 foot pitcher's circle. Most of them do but not on every pitch. It would be equally easy to say they do not stay within the two foot corridor between the pitcher's plate (rubber) and homeplate. I've yet to see a top level pitcher throw a screwball while keeping within the two foot corridor.
I have watched, I think, three of the Team USA games against NCAA opponents. In those games, I have observed at least one pitcher who: 1) lifted her pivot foot off the rubber during the "drag" before push off, 2) replanted the pivot foot in front of the rubber before releasing the ball, or 3) performed what is commonly called a leap - did not drag the pivot foot after push off. I have seen each of the Team USA pitchers (as well as each of the replacement players who are pitchers) commit one of these infractions on multiple occasions. I haven't seen one called for it yet.
I have watched about a dozen and a half NCAA games in two of the divisions, both in person and via television, and while I have seen plenty of pitchers who commit none of these infractions, I have seen quite a few who do but are never called for them. I have watched several dozen high school games this year, seen numerous infractions and one call for an illegal pitch. The one call I witnessed involved a coach from one team complaining to the ump about it, the ump demanding her to show him "where in the rules it says that," and then, after a ten minute discussion of the rules in which the coach in fact showed the ump the rulebook, he made the call just once after which the pitcher continued to commit the infraction. Ironically, the pitcher for the coach who raised the stink also arguably commits some foot fouls in her delivery!
One local HS pitcher was photographed in the midst of her delivery with both feet quite obviously off the ground. Tha photograph made the front page of the local newspaper. The pundits went absolutely berserk about the illegal pitch! They claimed the girl's pitching coach was to blame for the infraction. They claimed the pitching coach had pretty much taught every pitcher in the state who hops or leaps to do it. They stopped short of blaming the pitching coach for the high price of gasoline and pasta but everything else that was wrong with the world was, I believe, ultimately traceable to this particular pitching coach! The truth is the guy does not tolerate any such infractions from his students. When he sees them, he corrects them. I know because my daughters go to him and one of them developed a very slight leap when she was 10. We worked for weeks to eliminate that. So the charges have been dropped and he will not be brought before the UN for his alleged crimes against humanity.
Now, I told you that many in my area do not have that firm of a grasp upon pitching rules. They also do not seem to understand the limitations of umpires eyesight and attention. There are often complaints about the feet of the pitcher during preliminary tournament games in which there is but one lonely, single umpire. It is not commonly understood that a plate umpire cannot watch the pitcher's hands and feet while also calling balls and strikes. Generally a solitary umpire will focus on the pitcher's hands and the strike zone since both are within a normal human being's line of vision. When there are two umpires, the plate ump usually still maintains his interest in the hands of the pitcher and it is the field ump who might be concerned with her feet. It should be noted, however, that even when you have two umps, the field ump is more concerned with baserunners' feet not leaving the base before release than he is with the pitcher's feet. Still coaches go to the plate ump for discussions about feet and the field ump for questions about her hands. It's absurd but I have seen this repeatedly done by people who should know better.
The most egregiously ridiculous thing I have seen a coach do with respect to the legality or illegality of a pitcher's delivery happened in a 10U game which was being played generally under ASA rules but which allowed the pitcher to place "one or two feet" on the rubber before delivery and made no point about enforcing leaping or hopping rules due to the age of the participants. The first base coach of what was essentially a local all-star team didn't like what he saw. What he saw was a pitcher who, while basically legal, might have been hopping off the rubber due to poor conditions in and around the rubber. It is rather difficult for anyone to push off the rubber and maintain contact with the ground when there is a 6-9 inch hole in front of it, more so when the kid's foot is only 9 inches long!
This coach complained to the lone ump behind the plate. Then when illegal pitch was not called, he again approached the ump who, rather unsure of himself, instructed the pitcher to not leap. But he made no illegal pitch call. The next time the coach approached the ump, he decided he'd had enough and told the coach to go back to the coach's box (basically, shut up and let's get on with this). The coach not knowing what else to do, began to yell "BALK" on every delivery. He strategically yelled this as the girl began the last 25% of her arm circle and before she released the pitch. The poor girl didn't know what to do and she began to cry. At this point, she somehow managed to finish the inning without missing the strike zone too badly and the jackass went back to his team's dugout.
Interestingly, when he came out again, he began to yell at every pitch again and then it turned ugly. People from the other side began yelling back and threats were exchanged. Finally the guy began to shut up. If I'm not mistaken, one of the other coaches replaced him at first base in subsequent innings. Then they guy's kid came out to pitch late in the game. If you want to see the picture of an illegal 10U pitcher who should go back to taking lessons for 6 months before entering the circle again, this guy's kid fit the bill. Enough about an imbecile who should learn to keep his mouth shut. I know I'll never forget the guy. Neither will some "well connected people" who were involved with another team he pulled the same stunt on. The guy is marked and many now know him. I hope this doesn't effect his kid's future but I know if I ever see his kid, I won't have her on my team. And I'm not alone.
The point is, people just don't seem to know the pitching rules and recognize when they really ought to be applied. By the way, there is no such thing as a "BALK" in girls fastpitch softball. There are situations in which the ruling would be similar to a balk. But balk is a baseball term. It applies only to situations where there are runners on base. It involves the requirement that the pitcher come to a set position and then either throw to a base or deliver a pitch. Balks are called to prevent the pitcher from taking an unfair advantage when he tries to pick a runner off base. These rules do not apply to fastpitch in which there is no leading and there is no "set position." Yet I have heard many people exclaim "BALK" at softball games. Some rec leagues have a rule concerning balks but this is ridiculous and usually proceeds from fathers who played baseball and don't have time to understand why it is inapplicable to fastpitch. Most likely they have a poor understanding of the baseball balk rules!
These rules concerning the pitcher's feet are apparently made in order to prevent the pitcher from gaining an unfair advantage. It seems pretty clear that any rule prohibiting a pitcher from doing X or Y must be in the realm of obtaining an unfair advantage. Otherwise it would be merely arbitrary and capricious - there's no other valid reason for rules governing a pitcher's behavior. If there is, please point it out to me.
It is pretty clear to me that most umpires understand pitching rules pretty well. I've talked to many of them in passing and I've yet to find one who is completely ignorant about them. That's probably because these rules have not varied that widely over the years and, when something major has changed, it is usually discussed ad nauseum. I don't get invited to many umpire BBQs but I do know a couple of the fellows and they usually like to talk.
In the NCAA, there has been some recent effort to make sure the umpires know the rules with regards to footwork. Spy softball included in its April 1 update a publication the NCAA distributed to umpires which exhaustively goes over "the pitcher's feet." If you don't understand my explanation of these issues, please take a look at the publication because it makes the rules extremely clear. Any umpire receiving this information and actually reading it should not have any questions whatsoever about what is legal and what is illegal footwork. Still, you don't see frequent calls on this and that isn't because pitchers aren't leaping and hopping.
It is also pretty clear to me that many pitchers offend the letter of the rules concerning leaping and hopping in such a manner that it cannot be missed by umps. As I said, I observed one HS ump call it after being badgered by a coach. But he called it just the one time though I did see him watching the pitcher later and her infractions were pretty obvious. By the way, I have seen ASA Gold level college prospects leap and hop on numerous occasions. These girls are from all over the country. And I've seen a good number of them do this when they played games in front of big time college coaches they wanted to impress. Still, I have seen no calls from the ASA umps and a good portion of these girls end up filling the rosters of top 25 Div I schools. So I suspect it isn't quite the big deal many make it out to be and it certainly isn't isolated to my state.
It is very easy to observe illegal footwork on TV, relatively simple when watching a game from the sidelines and quite another thing entirely to do so on the field when you are trying to call a game. The other night we were watching a televised game and my wife turned to me and asked, "did you see her hop?" I hadn't so we rewound the game via our DVR. It was pretty obvious. Similarly, we attended a game recently in which a pitcher was obviously hopping. Another time we saw a pitcher who replanted her foot about 6 inches in front of the rubber. And I have seen too many leapers to count. I'm obviously unconcerned with making sure I call the right outs on plays in the field since I'm comfortably along the sidelines but these infractions were pretty darn obvious to me. There's no way an umpire could have missed every infraction. I can see it a few times when there are runners on base or other things going on but there's no way these infractions could be missed over an entire game. They see the evil and know it when they see it.
The third option I gave you above was the umps were reluctant to make the call because none of their buddies make it. As I said, I've known a few umps here and there and I can't say that these guys and gals were ever reluctant to give their opinion on any subject whatsoever, even if everyone disagreed with that opinion. I've yet to meet an ump who I would expect to be afraid of voicing his opinion on the feet of a pitcher because none of his cohort is currently making the call. I just cannot see that sort of thing happening. I've seen umps make all sorts of calls on arcane rules nobody else was familiar with and none of their cohort had called recently.
The only thing I am left with is the notion that umps know the rules, see the potential infractions, and would be perfectly willing to make the call if they thought the pitcher were obtaining an unfair advantage. I believe many of these fellows would also make the call in age group ball if they felt there was any chance they were helping the pitcher's career. What I mean is most of these guys and gals are out there for love of the game. They generally have a very high regard for the young girls who play it. Most of them dream that one day they'll see this or that girl play high school or college ball. And they really appreciate young pitchers. If any of the umps I know saw something badly illegal, they would work hard to try to help the girl overcome the issue. They might talk at length to the coach or even approach the parents after the game to at least discuss what they observed. I have had this happen and I have observed it happen to others. These people take their jobs very seriously and most see helping a kid get better at the game to be an integral part of the responsibility they sign up for.
Finally, it is my belief that the reason we don't see illegal pitch called often is because the umpires see what I see. That is, they and I do not see any advantage gained by the questionable foot work. I may be wrong about this and I welcome any sort of inquiry or comments by umps but from what I can see, leapers do not get an advantage. And crow hoppers may appear to get an advantage but when you put a hopper next to a legal pitcher and watch the degree to which the hop helps or hinders her, what you are left with is the idea that a hopper loses something on her pitches as a result of the hop.
Hoppers really get no closer to the batter than draggers. They do not gain anything by the new point of impetus. That's because their normal forward momentum would be greater if they didn't re-land and push off. You come off that rubber about as fast as you can explode. If you re-land and then push again, you have lost a good deal of forward momentum. To see what I mean, try it for yourself. Go into a wind-up, leap, land and push off again. Its pretty awkward. And most importantly, you are moving faster during the leap than you are after the push off from a new point of impetus. I just don't see any real advantage but maybe you do. Aside from this possible explanation, I cannot otherwise explain why you almost never see illegal pitch called on a leaper or hopper.
I also think many of us would be better served if we focused on something besides the pitchers leap or hop. We can yell all we want from the sidelines or dugout. We can even eat into the game by constantly going out to go over the rulebook with umps. But that's not going to put runners on base or make our hitters hit the ball. In the end, the rules are what they are, the umps call whatever they call, and the game continues. If you want to win, do so by putting the ball into play.Labels: pitching, rules, umpiring
Permanent Link: No Evil
Obstruction!
by Dave
Thursday, October 25, 2007
I apologize for rehashing the subject I wrote about not 3 weeks ago regarding obstruction and interference but it happened again this weekend. This has become my cause celebre for the simple reason that I have yet to see an ump apply the rules properly despite a lot of discussion from umpires in charge (UICs), regulating bodies, and others. We, in the softball community, need to decide what the rules are and then make absolutely certain they are applied correctly by those PAID to officiate our games. UICs need to not only make sure they understand the rules but also that the umps they assign to games fully understand them as well. Short of that, we should scrap the rules and play just like the big boys in MLB do - run down anyone who gets in our way!
Here's the situation:
A runner from third is racing towards home. The catcher stands awaiting a throw from an infielder. The catcher straddles homeplate. The runner arrives what appears to be a split second before ball and, without sliding or making any effort to avoid contact, collides with catcher who fallsdown while holding onto ball but having made the tag too late. The umpire calls the runner safe. The catcher is shaken up. After the play becomes apparently dead, coaches call time out and attend to their catcher while also arguing with the umpire that interference should have been called because "the runner didn't slide."
Later, between games, the umpire approaches fans sitting on sidelines and announces that he knows "you are not happy with my call." He explains that "the catcher obstructed the runner and that's why I called her safe." I replied directly to him, "but you didn't call obstruction, did you?" He replied, "Uh, yes, no, but I didn't have to. I called the runner safe."
That's not exactly correct.
This was a game which, while not sanctioned specifically by ASA, was expressly played under ASA rules and officiated by an umpire wearing ASA insignia. Neither the play nor the call, or lack thereof, altered the outcome of the game. The issue is safety and proper application of the interference/obstruction rules.
There is absolutely no question that a fielder may not block a base when not IN POSSESSION OF THE BALL. A fielder cannot be in the act of catching a thrown ball and blocking a runner from touching a base. A fielder must be in possession of the ball before she can be in the runners path. However, runners are obligated to avoid contact to the extent they can reasonably do so. Runners are not allowed to run into players deliberately in an effort to cause the fielder to drop the ball or otherwise prevent them from making a play - that's unquestionably interference. Accidentally running into a fielder and thereby preventing her from making a play can be called interference. Running deliberately and with great force into a fielder while staying on one's feet must be called interference.
In its May, 2006 clarification for umpires, the ASA has a discussion entitled "Obstruction Mechanics" which reads:
"PLAY: B1 hits a line drive into the gap between center field and right field. B1 is obstructed by F3 as they round 1B. The umpire signals delayed dead ball and verbally declares "obstruction" loud enough for everyone around the play to hear. The umpire determines that B1 should be protected to 3B. When does the umpire drop the arm that signaled the delayed dead ball for obstruction?
MECHANIC: The umpire signaled the delayed dead ball and verbally declared the obstruction correctly. The delayed dead ball signal should be maintained only long enough to ensure the players and coaches near the play are aware of the obstruction. If the obstructed runner is put out while still protected, dead ball is declared and the runner awarded 3B. (Umpire Manual – pages 229, 230 and 258 (Umpire Signal Chart))."
"Delayed dead ball" is signaled in every rulebook I have access to by extending the left arm horizontal to the ground. In some rulebooks a fist is made. Obstruction, again in every rulebook I have, is called orally by stating "obstruction" loud enough to be heard by the obstructed runner and anyone else, especially players and coaches effected by the call.
The ASA has a download on its site for umpires entitled Interference and Obstruction. In every instance in which obstruction is ruled to have occurred, the publication says that the umpire should "call 'obstruction' and signal a delayed dead ball." There is no discussion where an obstruction is judged to have occurred in which the umpire needn't make any call (delayed dead ball) because the runner reached base safely anyway.
In the events I described above, one could argue that the catcher did not have possession of the ball so she could be guilty of obstruction. However, she was not blocking the plate either. She was straddling it. There was plenty of room for a sliding runner to reach home. It is also difficult to call her for obstruction when you consider that there was significant contact - significant enough that she went down and then was shaken up afterwards - and yet she held onto the ball. The ball had to arrive before the runner, if but momentarily, since she caught it before going down. The fact that she was not blocking the plate has to be the deciding factor on whether there is an obstruction. Clearly there could not be one.
But I'll go along with the notion that she may have been obstructing the runner for the sake of argument. As an aside, when the ball and runner arrive simultaneously and the runner and fielder collide, the ASA calls this a "train wreck," which is a collision occurring when both players are doing what they can normally be expected to do, and holds that no call should be made. I can go along with that too. But in this case, no call was made beyond the safe call and the runner did not take any steps to avoid a collision as she is required to do. Every rulebook is clear that when a runner collides with a fielder purposely, with great force, and while remaining on her feet - not sliding - she is guilty of interference and should be called out. When obstruction and interference occur simultaneously (if that is actually possible!), interference must take precedence - there is no obstruction - and the runner is called out.
I want to make a couple points as a result of this experience. These are:
1) It is never appropriate for an umpire to explain his or her calls to fans on the sidelines. Umpires should restrict any explanation regarding specific calls to those involved in the game, including coaches who make proper inquiries. Fans should stay out of it as well, but in this case, it was the umpire who approached them.
2) There is in fact a way in which to call obstruction. That requires an extended arm to signal "delayed dead ball" and the utterance of the word "obstruction" loud enough so that players and coaches nearby can hear it. In this instance, there was no obstruction called. The umpire merely wanted to cover his butt by telling fans that he knew what he was doing and had really made the proper call.
3) I submit that in the case in which the ball and runner arrive simultaneously, no obstruction call can be made unless the fielder was blocking the base prior to the ball's arrival and this altered the runner's action. Similarly, no interference should be called if a runner collides with a catcher not in possession of the ball at the time of the collision who is blocking the path to homeplate. Also, runners are obligated to avoid collisions with fielders when they can by taking such actions as sliding (though sliding is not specifically required). These particulars involve the umpires judgment which cannot be questioned nor appealed. Yet umpires need to be fully versed in the rules regarding interference and obstruction, judge the facts as they perceive them, and make the right call based on their judgment and a proper understanding of the rules.
4) When an umpire makes a call such as the one I observed and then explains it to fans by claiming that there was an obstruction on the play when no proper signal was made at the time, this indicates to me that he knows deep down that he may have made the wrong call. He is more concerned with maintaining his stature as a revered official than he is with understanding the actual rules and making the correct call. He has lost credibility.
5) There is no particular advanced knowledge required to call balls and strikes, safe and out, etc. The infield fly rule (often referred to as the most complicated rule in sports) actually requires a minimal level of real understanding by anyone who otherwise knows the game. Fair and foul similarly require a minimal degree of higher intellection. Umpires are paid a fair rate (usually $25-50 per hour and a half game). They should at least make an attempt to understand the rules they are charged with enforcing. Umpires in charge (UICs) must take their "in charge" responsibilities seriously and make sure the folks they hire understand the important rules.
Otherwise, one of these days, somebody is going to be seriously hurt in a play like this. When that happens, somebody is going to make a federal case out of it. And the whole umpiring profession is going to pay the price (psychic or otherwise) for some child's serious injury or death.Labels: interference, obstruction, rules
Permanent Link: Obstruction!
Run Her Over!!!!!!!
by Dave
Monday, October 08, 2007
I'm writing today's post for the benefit of the fan/parent who yelled "run her over" yesterday at a game we attended. I'm also writing this for the benefit of the ASA umpires who demonstrated zero understanding of the rules with respect to this issue on another play in another game. Finally, I'm writing for the benefit of the entire softball community because I feel we have almost completely lost our understanding of these critical rules.
There were two plays, as I said, in different games, which brought this to my attention. The first one occurred in an extremely tight game, 2-1, on a play with bases loaded when the ball was hit back to the pitcher who threw to her catcher at homeplate. The catcher made the catch, the play was a force out, and for unknown reasons the out-of-position umpire called the runner safe even though she never made any attempt to avoid contact at the plate and ran into the catcher. It was somewhat close because the runner from third was charging fast but the ump, still standing in his pitch calling position, couldn't see that the catcher cleanly caught the ball. Still, even out of position, he couldn't miss the fact that the runner never made any attempt to avoid contact. Also, the catcher had the ball at the time of contact and was standing with just one foot on homeplate to affect the force out. She was not blocking the plate from the runner from third.
After the play was dead and time had been called, team coaches came out to attend to their hurt catcher and, then, to complain to the ump that runner interference should be called. The ump first suggested that the girl was safe because he called obstruction. He had never made any signal nor verbalized any utterance regarding obstruction. He simply called the runner at home safe.
When coaches asked if they could protest, he replied affirmatively. Then, when the other coach pointed out that a $100 fee had to be paid to lodge a protest, he informed the coaches and the matter was dropped. The coaches made sure their catcher was alright and, because of the nature of the girl, they started joking with her and made her laugh. Unbelievably, the plate ump was overheard making a comment after the game about "how hurt could she have been when she laughed moments after the contact. That comment was not just unprofessional, it is completely irrelevant. There is no requirement that a defensive player be injured before a call of interference is made!
I was so completely incensed at the call that I screamed to the ump that he should read his rulebook every now and again. After he told the coaches that they could protest the call I began offering him money so he could buy a rulebook since he "obviously didn't own one!" My actions were completely inappropriate but I hope the umpire went home and read the rule with an unbiased eye. He doesn't know the rule and he should.
As a sidebar, the field umpire warned me "that's enough, sir" and proceeded to engage me in a stare-down-fight. That's completely unprofessional and in no way called for as I shut up immediately upon being warned. The stare-down should not have occurred. It demonstrated completely unnecessary and uncalled for machismo by a man who was being paid to supervise a game. And, it should be noted, the field umpire also did not understand the rule.
To examine the issue of obstruction and interference, I am turning to the NCAA rulebook although the contest in question was under "college showcase" and ASA rules. I do not possess an ASA rulebook and it is not published online. For the most part, the rules are very similar. One publication on the ASA web site says the two rules are substantially similar. There is another document, an ASA umpires primer on obstruction and interference which I'll use after I go into the general rules.
NCAA rules define:
A) Interference - "Equipment or the act of an offensive player, coach, umpire or spectator that denies a reasonable opportunity to play the ball. The act may be intentional or unintentional and the ball must have been playable ... Note: If both players' actions are appropriate to the situation and contact could not be avoided, it is inadvertent contact and neither interference nor obstruction."
B) Obstruction - "The act of a defensive team member that hinders or impedes a batter's attempt to make contact with a pitched ball or that impedes the progress of a runner or batter-runner who is legally running the bases, unless the fielder is in possession of the ball, is fielding a batted ball or is about to receive a thrown ball. The act may be intentional or unintentional." For clarification purposes, "1. The defensive player must be in the process of catching the ball and not merely positioning, waiting for a throw to arrive. 2. The act may be intentional or unintentional."
NCAA rules also state "A base runner may not remain on her feet and deliberately, with great force, crash into a defensive player (holding the ball and waiting to apply a tag)." To explain a bit further, "The rules committee is concerned about unnecessary and violent collisions with the catcher at home plate ... The intent of this rule is to encourage ... to avoid such collisions, whenever possible ... A defensive player shall not block the base, plate or baseline without possession of the ball or not in the immediate act of catching the ball.
"Should an act of interference (offensive) occur after any obstruction (defensive), enforcement of the interference penalty would take precedence provided both violations involve the same base runner. For example, if an obstructed runner deliberately crashes into a fielder holding the ball, the obstruction call will be ignored, and the runner will be called out for interference."
When an umpire calls obstruction, "delayed dead ball is signaled. Obstruction is called and the runner is declared safe. Each runner must return to the last base legally touched ..."
Lastly, among the specific items which cannot be protested, interference and obstruction fall into this category.
The ASA umpires primer on obstruction and interference clearly states that a defensive player in possession of the ball cannot be called for obstruction.
There is certainly some element of umpires judgment involved in the play at home I described above. But no umpire should ever imply that he did, might have or would have called interference or obstruction after the fact. He either did or did not. In this case, he did not - he never signaled a dead ball of any sort, delayed or otherwise and he never uttered the word obstruction. He simply called the runner safe. I disagree with the call - I was sitting fifteen feet from home but that isn't the issue I'm describing. What I am describing is a base runner not making any attempt to avoid a collision with a catcher. What I'm describing is a situation in which it is simply NOT POSSIBLE for a call of obstruction.
Finally, it is clear to me that neither obstruction nor interference as judges by the umpire is a question which can form the basis of a protest. The umpires at this game seemed completely ignorant of that fact. Obstruction and interference are almost always questions of judgment as much as balls and strikes are. The only issues which are ever appropriate subjects for protests are the existence of a particular rule or the "non-judgmental" interpretation of a rule. If the rules are clearly and correctly understood, an umpire's judgment dictates the call. For example, if an umpire judged a play to involve obstruction but agreed that the fielder had possession of the ball - something that did not transpire in the incident I described - a team could protest with those particular stipulations and most likely win since the umpires interpretation of the rules was clearly erroneous. If the only issue was whether the umpire judged interference or obstruction to have occured, there is no basis for an appeal.
As an additional aside, the plate umpire must have recognized the possibility he made a mistake because his subsequent calls of balls and strikes were egregious. The next batter suffered the brunt. He called a second strike on a pitch that was a good foot outside and above her eyes!
I should also tell you that the call did not change the outcome of the game. My daughter drove in the winning run in the 9th!
A far more troubling incident, in my opinion, occured later that same day. We are a 14U team playing in what is billed as an 18U high school / travel team league. No standings are kept in the league because it is seen as developmental - it exists to give high school and travel players someplace to work on skills in the fall. Yesterday was the league's mid-season tournament. Winners in three divisions get $15 t-shirts! The tournament is a tremendous amount of fun and allows winning teams to play as much as 4 or 5 games in a single day.
As it happens, we were playing against the 18U team from our very same organization. There was a potential play at the plate which didn't evolve properly for a variety of reasons and the girl was easily safe at home. One of the parents from our 18U team yelled to, presumably, his daughter to "run her over," meaning plow over the catcher. I don't know the age of the runner but she plays 18U travel and high school ball, and our catcher is in middle school. That's irrelevant to any call on the field but I want to set the stage properly as it did very much color my feelings on the incident.
I have often heard a comment arise in youth sports and that is "you watch too much major league baseball." In this case the comment is entirely appropriate. In MLB, collisions occur with some regularity. MLB is an entertainment industry. Plate collisions are great theatre. But in youth sports, we're after something else.
Girls fastpitch softball does not in any way seek to have collisions between players at any time. They are to be avoided whenever possible. That is why we have the "avoid collision at all costs" rules which are contained in numerous expansions of rules via examples and explicitly discussed almost anywhere the subject arises.
I have often heard parents, players, coaches, and umpires claim that runners have to slide whenever there is a play, particularly at homeplate. In my understanding, there is no rule which ever expressly requires sliding per se. If an umpire wants to tell teams that he will call runners out for not sliding into home, I suppose you could argue that's his or her prerogative. And the ump is being fair if that is told to the teams before a game or tournament.
There are words to the effect that sliding is required on close plays at home and those read like this: "A base runner may not remain on her feet and deliberately, with great force, crash onto a defensive player (holding the ball and waiting to apply a tag)." This is close to a required sliding rule but it is not exactly that. It is a collision avoidance rule on close plays. Collision avoidance is expressly within the rules governing softball. A base runner's slide is presumed to be an attempt to avoid contact.
All softball goiverning bodies recognize that some contact is going to occur in the sport and they make allowances for "incidental contact" which cannot otherwise be avoided by two players who are acting appropriately. But, there is no room in this sport for "run her over" in any form whatsoever. Catcalls regarding this are decidedly bush league. The fact that this particular game was played in a no-standings, developmental league between two teams of the same organization, one theoretically 4 years older than the other, is particularly troubling. It demonstrates not only that we don't seem to know the rules of our game but that we have lost touch with our better selves.
I have witnessed a number of incidents at a huge volume of games over the years which can call into question the line between tough, gritty play, and deliberate, overly aggressive, rule infractions. I have watched base runners strike players with elbows on balls hit well beyond outfielders. I have seen infielders try to intimidate obviously younger base runners through various means including intentionally standing in base lines on steals and/or balls hit into the gaps. These incidents point to circumstances in which there has been a little too much baseball watching. They also point to something else. That is, we need to clean up our sport some, particularly in the youth version. Before that can happen, we need to have our on the field officials fully understand the rules they are charged with applying and enforcing. Then they need to agressively enforce those rules. Then the rest of us need to take a step back and realize why it is that we are involved in this sport.Labels: interference, obstruction, rules
Permanent Link: Run Her Over!!!!!!!
One Other Pony Nationals Story
by Dave
Thursday, July 26, 2007
I almost forgot to mention a little anecdote I have from the Pony National championship tournament. I give it to you with a little reluctance because I cannot guarantee whether anything inappropriate happened or not. I share it with you because it highlights a little gap in the way rules are applied.
Last year at Pony Nationals, my wife got a little sick of competing for the one washer-drier pair at our hotel. She went out driving and located her favorite laundromat on the planet. When we returned to Ohio this year, she resolved to completely skip the hotel laundry room and head straight for it. Apparently she was not the only person to avail herself of this particular very clean, well-run laundry.
Once, while waiting for the uniforms to finish washing, she encountered the mother of a girl from another team. The team had done well enough in pool play but had bumped into an extremely talented team which had soundly defeated them. She noted that she thought her daughter's team had a decent chance of making some noise in the tournament. Then she got diarrhea of the mouth and said something I believe she wished she hadn't.
The woman at the laundromat claimed "we have a chance to win this tournament" and then noted that one of the girls had brought her older, ace-pitching sister with her. I don't know the age of the girl nor her ability level but this woman said the kid sister's uniform fit the older sister perfectly and perhaps she might be trying it on very soon, as soon as bracket play began. If you're not getting me, let me say it outright. This woman said her daughter's team was going to use an illegally aged super pitcher because they were there to win, period.
So you think this sort of thing doesn't happen? The only thing I'm sure of is, if this did actually take place, it is neither the first nor last time it has happened or will happen in youth competitive sports. It is a travesty because the lessons learned by the team, which clearly knows the age of the girl in question, completely wipes out any of the good which has been gained by participating in sports.
Several weeks ago, we played a team in the seeding round of a small tournament. This particular team was from several hundred miles outside our area. I'm not sure why they came all that way to play a tournament but come they did. The team was a little weaker than we expected and we beat them pretty easily in the seeding round. Then we got them again in the elimination round but this time they had a pitcher we couldn't hit.
The team was playing 12U and, after they eliminated us, the coaches and parents told us that they were an 11 year old team. I was struck by this comment because although I could clearly see that the majority of the team was young, the ace pitcher clearly was not. She had at least four years worth of pitching lessons at a high level under her belt. Her mechanics were pretty much flawless for an "11 year old." She threw a bona fide 55, reaching near 57 on occassion. Her control of all pitches was impeccable. She walked not a single batter. She would typically go up 0-2 and then throw a ball just 9 inches off the plate on a drop-curve. Most of our batters flailed hopelessly and went down. My daughter, a very accomplished hitter, was the only one who could touch her. She drilled a double off the kid and you should have seen the look on her face when that happened. To say she was surprised is an extreme understatement.
Now I do not know the age of the pitcher but there is one thing I'm certain of. She was NOT 11 years old as the team told us she was. The birth certificate she was on most definitely said she was 11 but the girl was not that age. I've spent quite a lot of time around girls this age (Pony Nationals had around 700 of them in the house). What I look at is their physical development, particularly muscle definition, and, most of all, facial characteristics. You can tell a girl's age largely by facial characteristics, including expressions, fairly easily even when they are otherwise early bloomers. Muscular development can vary quite a bit but even amongst very high caliber athletes (pre-Olympic), I've never seen this kind of development in even an older 12 year old (say January birthday). This girl's muscle definition was off kilter. This girl had the facial characteristics of a 14 year old, perhaps 15. Her pitching would have been just about right for a very good 14 year old.
Besides looking at her face and muscle development in a vacuum, one had the entire rest of the team with which to compare her. The other kids looked like 11s in terms of faces and muscles, though they were clearly an older 11 year old team. This girl was different on all accounts. She didn't look or act like the other girls. And there was another kid on the sidelines who just happened to be about the right age. She also happened to look enough like her to be her sibling. She seemed a little out of sorts like she belonged on the team but just didn;t have a uniform. She sat quietly, maybe even a little dejected. It seemed odd. Other girls on the team kept looking at her sitting on the sidelines. After the game she joined up with the other girls while the big kid seemed disinterested in talking to anyone.
Given the ability level of this particular pitcher, I would have expected this team to play some type of competition which culminated in one of the bigger sanctioning bodies' championships. In conversations with the team, we learned that they decided not to play any of those (ASA, NSA, PONY, FAST) and instead raised money to make the trip to our state just to play this tournament which was not a qualifier for anything. I can't prove the girl was over the age limit and I don't really much care. I didn't mind our team being eliminated. But something just didn't feel right.
You know, in softball, the age stuff is basically supported by the honor method. A birth certificate cannot provide any real level of certainty unless it is closely scrutinized and the scrutinizer is absolutely certain that the person on the paper is the person in the uniform. There is dishonesty everywhere. I am not so naive that I expect everyone to be completely honest. And I know this stuff goes on because I have witnessed it first hand.
Some years ago, we were watching a 10U game and saw a very large girl playing. My youngest daughter has a kid on her current 10U team who stands at 5 foot 8 inches tall, weighs somewhere near 150-175 (a girl never tells), and can crush the ball when she gets ahold of it. But her musculature belies her youth and her coordination is not great as her nerves are working overtime to keep up with her height. Her facial expressions are age appropriate. Still, she's had her age questioned in 10U ball since she was 8!
The girl I saw several years ago was just as tall as the girl on my daughter's current team but she was easily 50 pounds heavier, had some muscular definition which was highly unusual for the age, threw about 53-55 miles per hour with good accuracy, hit several balls 200+ feet, and wore the facial expression of an older girl. I never thought to question the her age. I simply accepted it and moved on. I was naive then.
Several months later I heard that someone on the girl's team had reported her birth certificate had been falsified. The sanctioning body investigated, found that indeed it had, removed the girl from ever playing under its authority again and did basically the same thing to the coaches involved because they had been found to be involved in the scheme.
So I'm coming to a point here and I think it is extremely important for all to consider what I'm about to say. Softball ain't the only sport around these here parts. Soccer and basketball, for two, are more well developed across the nation as a whole. They have encountered this problem quite a bit before and the way in which they deal with it is a more well developed mechanism for insuring age restrictions are followed than what softball does.
It is my understanding that some sports sanctioning bodies, particularly in basketball and soccer, require a much more rigorous proof of age than a simple birth certificate. They require some sort of age guarantee affadavit, signed by persons who can suffer penalties if the document is falsified. They also require a photo ID which stays with the kid for the year and is presented before all competitions. This is certainly costly but I believe it is the bare minimum needed to prevent (or almost prevent) the sort of cheating which has become far too commonplace at too many youth sports events.
Please understand that the issue I'm referring to is something which can never be entirely prevented. Siblings often look so much alike that you can easily confuse one older with another younger. And if people want to get around the rules, they certainly can. But I would like to see the sort of last minute "surprise substitutions" alluded to by the woman in the laudromat be prevented. Personally, I think it's silly to have your kid play down an age category in any circumstance. It bores me more than horrifies me that this can happen. But I believe this is something which sanctioning bodies should at least examine to see if things can be tightened up a bit.Labels: rules
Permanent Link: One Other Pony Nationals Story
Interesting Pony Experiences
by Dave
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Well, I'm back from 12U Pony (Protect Our Nation's Youth) Nationals. I know I've been absent from this blog for several weeks but I've been trying to get an extremely young, inexperienced team ready to compete in Vienna, Ohio and that's left little time for much else. We've played a lot of games over the past several weeks. The team was finally starting to come together and believe in themselves. Then we went out to Ohio and, while the kids had an absolute blast, a few experiences out there have soured me on Pony.
Let me be clear that this team "earned" its way into nationals via a hosting bid. That is to say, we qualified by holding a tournament, not by winning anything. The best we could muster this year was a couple second place finishes, one in a true "C" level one-day round robin and another in a "B" level tournament with only a few good teams. We lost to a couple Pony National Sweet 16 teams in those second place finishes.
I was satisfied with our results because the team is majority 11U. We had 6 12s on the team but, between them, there were 4 kids with any real experience and about 75% of that involved the experience of sitting the bench. Our other 2 12s had never played any sort of travel ball before and one of them had only played a year of rec softball. Our 8 kids at 11U had maybe a half dozen 10U tournaments worth of experience. 2 of them qualify for 10U this year and one of those qualifies for 10U next year! When you start with kids like this, winning is not your goal. Personal development is all you can reasonably seek. On that score, our mission was accomplished. We built character rather than anything resembling a winning record.
Our young, inexperienced team hit bottom, as all teams must do, some time in mid-June. We had about 6 games in a one week stretch where the best we could muster was a 5-1, rain-shortened, preliminary round, 3 inning victory, though one against another Pony Nationals Sweet 16 team. That team promptly run-ruled us in 3 innings the next morning. It was rather ugly. We held them to a single base runner for the first 2 innings and then in the third inning, it was as if someone had cut deeply into the team's jugular. I don't think we ever got an out. Our team was psychologically crushed. We followed this loss with two extremely bad losses in essentially a rec league we had joined just to get some additional scrimmages scheduled. I thought it might help us build some confidence. After those two losses, I wasn't sure whether they would ever win a game again. I wasn't sure we would ever avoid a run rule again!
After one loss, we waited for the other team to leave and conducted an extremely hard, two hour long practice which went very well. I thought the kids would recover but our next several games were awful. I thought about taking that hosting bid and throwing it in the trash can. The kids seemed as if they no longer wanted to play softball. They did not seem to have the will to compete. They began to bicker a bit between and amongst themselves. I didn't know what to do to pull them out of this very deep slump.
Eventually I decided that the team was going to nationals whether they wanted to or not. We were going, after all, not to compete for the title or even a place in the Sweet 16. We were going for the experience, to trade pins, play a bunch of games, see what real softball is like, etc. So I decided that what we really needed to do was put the fun back into the sport. I decided to no longer become apoplectic when an opponent was struck out, this was followed by a passed ball, and this was followed by a throw over the groggy first baseman and past the sleeping right fielder, resulting in the batter coming all the way round the bases. I decided that I would take the "oh well" attitude whenever we made atrocious plays in the field.
The girls mostly reacted to my new philosophy pretty well. We started occasionally winning games against inferior teams - something that was rather rare for a while there. And then we started beating a few teams which I think I would characterize as being as good as us or perhaps even a little better. We didn't win often but we did win a few. One game in particular stood out as the highlight of the season. We soundly beat a team which I'm pretty sure was mostly 12s and had an overall winning record.
So we packed up our equipment and headed out to Ohio to see if our new found team confidence would stand us well enough to compete in at least some games at Pony Nationals. Things began fairly well enough. We got some decent pitching and seemed to get over our jitters. Then, when I thought we might settle down and win a game or two in pool play, the wheels came resoundingly off the cart. We started making errors on routine plays.
Competition began with us scoring a couple runs in the first inning of our first game. We then managed to get two outs while the bases were still loaded but our best fielder made an error and allowed the opponent to tie the game. Then our bats went silent for the remainder of the day. Then our second baseman made a huge error in the second inning. At that point, we stopped being able to play the game. We lost that one 7-2 but were mercied in 3 innings in the next contest. Our final pool round game went into the loss column when the clock took mercy on us while the opponent was actively trying to avoid the run rule.
We had taken our lumps and we entered bracket play against a team which would make the Sweet 16 after a few more games. Our pitcher had warmed up well but had trouble getting the ball over. She walked the first batter and then hit the second. After a passed ball, runners were on 2nd and 3rd. A ground ball went as a fielders choice as our third baseman held the runner at third. Then our pitcher struck out the next four batters. m Unfortunately, that resulted in just one out and 5 runs scoring. How is that possible? I'm not actually sure but I can tell you it happened in front of my eyes. The phrase catcher meltdown comes to mind but that's a story for another day.
Somehow we got out of that inning but our confidence was broken. And the team was ready to fracture because the catcher had a complete mental and physical melt. I was forced to remove her from the game but the reason I had to do that had nothing to do with the passed balls. She freaked out in a manner with which I am not accustomed on a softball diamond. Interestingly, the team calmed down after I removed the kid from the game. But our first round bracket game was over because we were already down 5-0 to start and our bats remained silent against mediocre (at best) pitching.
I felt good about all but the first inning of that game and I guess the girls did too. We finally got our first win of the tournament in the losers bracket. We soundly defeated our opponent something like 10-4 and went home to rest before taking on another opponent we had never heard of or seen before. As the brackets are set up, the team we would be facing was a loser in the other loser bracket game. I suspected they might be tough, however, because I thought the team to which they lost was pretty good based on completely unrelated experience. We returned to the field to watch the team we had soundly defeated romp on the winner of the other loser game. Now we had to face the loser to the loser of a team we had already soundly defeated. Does that make sense to you? I felt we had a right to be somewhat confident.
Now here we get to the point that I wanted to discuss with you. Here is the experience which caused me to write this thing. Here is the experience which has soured me on Pony.
Last year I told you that at Pony Nationals I saw some of the best and some of the worst umpiring of my life. This year, I would have to say that the umpiring I saw was on average far superior to what went on in 2006. But not all of my experiences were praiseworthy.
In this winner of a lose game vs. loser of a loser game, a contest which was in the single elimination phase of bracket play, our opponent happened to be the home town team. The local media was covering their every move. The team was constantly interviewed by TV news broadcasts. Their games were all over the local paper. These girls had become local media darlings because their area was hosting the event. And everybody, aside from me, had noticed this fact.
Our team got on TV one night because we were standing near these girls. There were all sorts of photographs in the paper from their games, etc., etc. So there we were facing elimination and our opponent, also facing elimination, was the local favorite. That's not the scenario I would have chosen, had anyone asked me!
We looked and looked for a place to warm-up. Pony had told us before the tournament that the complexes being used had loads of warm-up area. Ding - that was false. The only space adequate for any sort of warm-up was a miniature field with about 40-50 feet worth of infield and 60-70 of outfield. That would have been fine for us but there were 8 teams trying to warm-up on that space! We were forced to make do with whatever space we could find which meant four girls over here, two over there and the rest wherever we could find any sort of space. We kept an eye on our watches so we could have enough time to pull everyone back together, go to the field, get our gear into the dugout and maybe talk for a few moments.
We did this and as soon as we arrived at the proper field, I noticed the plate ump being sort of overly chummy with our local opponent. That concerned me but I shook it off. We still had 15 minutes before the scheduled game time so I figured we would relax and go over signs, maybe give a little pep talk. Then the plate ump noticed we arrived and he more or less charged us. He barked for our girls to get their bats and helmets out NOW because we're going to get this thing started very SOON. Then he grabbed two of my coaches and told them their attire was inappropriate so they would not be permitted on the field. They were wearing basically the same garb they had worn at our first five games on the same couple of fields! And we had double checked the dress code before play had ever begun.
Let me explain that a coach known to us had been approached by a facility official and told he could not wear jeans on the field. He checked the Pony rulebook for some guidance, as did I, and we could find nothing in it which might indicate that new, clean, unremarkable blue jeans were prohibited. So this other coach called higher up Pony officials and they all agreed that this was absolutely wrong. The kind of attire Pony was trying to avoid was slovenly and overly provocative clothing. They didn't want ripped or tattered clothing of any sort and they didn't want some centerfold twenty something out there wearing short-shorts. They told our coach friend to call him if there was ever an issue. He never had a problem again and the team is still playing as of this evening.
Anyway, back to our game. The umps told us two of our coaches could not be on the field so they walked over to the officials booth to get a ruling - basically to connect the higher up official with the facility official and lay this nonsense to rest. Then the plate ump noticed that there were just two of us and decided he didn't like the other guy's attire. Off he went to get a similar ruling. That left me with myself coaching third, something I avoid at all costs, a kid off the bench, with a helmet on, coaching first, and nobody in the dugout to keep order - something Pony, correctly, does not allow. You are supposed to keep a coach in the dugout to maintain order.
I quickly changed the signals to our baserunners since I don't know them off the top of my head. We adapt them game by game and I have to admit that I don't know them any longer. So I gave a simplified set of signs to the kids but I also hoped that our coaches would be back in plenty of time since game time was still more than 10 minutes away. That's what I thought. Then the plate ump charged me again and demanded that I come out for the plate meeting. He went over ground rules in a rather impatient manner and quickly did the coin toss, not allowing me to see what had come up but it must have been favorable because immediately after he grabbed the coin, he said to the other coach, "of course you want home" and we were off to the races. I started my game clock immediately but I'm jumping ahead.
The other team stormed out to the field immediately and the ump called batter up. Just then my coaches returned having obtained the proper consent and the plate ump seemed rather annoyed about it. I yelled to our kids to go back to the old signs and we settled in for a game which I was sure was going to be easy.
The first inning, we scored 3 runs before an out was made as our opponent misplayed every ball. Then we had a kid try to score from 3rd on a ground ball to short and she clearly made it despite the catcher blocking the plate prematurely, before she had the ball. The plate ump animatedly called her out. I think he thought he might get on the news since there were cameras around. And he was dead wrong. The girl was easily safe.
Now I have to digress for another moment because there's an important point here. When we attended the manager's meeting, Pony had gone to great lengths to discuss things which would be emphasized in this tournament. They wanted no misunderstandings. The point which received the greatest amount of emphasis concerned obstruction. We were told point blank something like, "You all have spent hours and hours teaching your fielders to 'block, catch, tag' but we're not going to allow that. You must instruct your fielders to 'catch, block, tag' at this tournament. If they don't do that, they WILL be called for obstruction." We had played our fair share of Pony tournaments and had never heard this point of emphasis discussed before. We had learned the hard way - at the cost of many Pony tournament outs - that the proper way was 'block, catch, tag.'
We spent a good deal of time discussing the point with the kids. We have three infielders who routinely 'block, catch, tag' because they have been taught to do this. They don't block until the ball is on the way to them but block they do when that moment arrives. You can't unteach this skill but we tried and our kids did well avoiding any real obstruction as far as I'm concerned.
Here we were in the first inning of our sixth game and we had this girl running in from third. The catcher clearly obstructed here but that didn't matter since she was clearly safe. Yet this plate ump called her out! We didn't score again after that play and then we took the field. As I said, the other team was pretty weak and their first three batters whiffed without a chance of hitting the ball.
The next inning, we went weakly. Our opponent got its first hit, a double. We got an out on a grounder but the next kid singled. The runner from second scored easily but as she rounded the bag, our shortstop was close enough to have reached out and slapped her hand - which is to say not particularly close but, I suppose, close enough. The plate ump yelled, "OBSTRUCTION AT THIRD, OBSTRUCTION AT THIRD." I happened to be looking right at third when he called it. There was no obstruction and there was no ramification of the call. The kid scored easily without a play. The call was entirely intended to completely unnerve the kid.
Later, we had another kid thrown out at the plate. This time she was clearly out but the obstruction was far more egregious!! That ended our offensive inning and our first base coach calmly walked up to the plate ump for clarification of the obstruction rule. He said, "we were told at the managers meeting ... is that correct?" The ump said with a wry smile, "why yes it is." My coach calmly asked him about whether this applied to homeplate and when he again wryly said yes, he asked about the two previous calls at the plate, one of which involved our girl sliding too far from the plate as she was blocked by the catcher who then caught the ball a full second later and tagged our runner. The plate ump rudely dispensed our coach with a warning, "Don't you EVER question a judgement call by me again."
At this point our coaches and players were all almost completely unnerved and the wheels seemed to fall off the cart again. We had several misplays and the score wound up being 6-4 with us trailing by a run. We changed pitchers and our new arm began mowing them down quickly. We scored another run, making it 6-5 but a missed signed and a really poor baserunning play cost us a potentially big inning. We hustled out to the field and got ready to put this team down so we could bat again.
The count went 0-2 on the first batter and our pitcher tried to get her fishing on an outside pitch. She missed with a really wide one, one the catcher could not possibly catch and the plate ump called "strike 3" whereupon all heck broke loose and the girl reached first. The next girl got a hit and the runner, who had reached second on a PB, scored making it 7-5. Our pitcher settled in and threw the ball hard down the middle since we had reached the bottom of the order. She quickly struck out the next two kids and the third girl approached the plate to hopefully also strike out. I knew we were going to win because I had a watch on this game and we clearly had another 3 minutes before the no-start-new-inning would go into effect. The new inning starts with the moment of the 3rd put-out.
The plate ump suddenly looked at me, looked at the small, frail girl coming to bat and quickly removed his mask. He hurried over to his clock and cupped it in his hand. He then announced, "the time for this game has expired." He then, still standing next to our opponent's dugout, asked loudly, "please tell me the score." Our opponent said 7-5. He said, "and you're the home team?" They said "yes" as if there was any doubt in anyone's mind. The plate ump immediately called the game on time. When I looked down at my clock, I saw there were still 2 minutes remaining even after the theatrics - which did not, by the way, make it onto the news that night.
This plate ump did not do what every single plate umpire I have ever witnessed normally does, which is, to show the losing team that time has actually expired. Instead, he pushed a button on the clock and slipped it into his pocket, then quickly left the field without so much as the usual "thank you folks, have a nice day" which every umpire I have ever witnessed routinely does unless there is some serious ill will going on during the game.
Now our team did not deserve to do very much in this tournament. We gained as much as we really needed. What the girls needed was to go have a nice relaxing time, which they did, after each of them cried for an hour because they felt they should have won this game. I know in my heart of hearts that they would have won this game had this umpire not taken it away from them for God only knows what reason.
He tried to have our coaches removed but failed. He tried to prevent us from scoring by permitting the opponent to obstruct while calling obstruction against us at times which could only have been meant to intimidate our 10, 11, and 12 year old players. He deliberately threatened our coaches when he couldn't get rid of them by bullying when all they had asked about was a simple clarification regarding the single most important rule in the tournament. He controlled this game in a manner which is unbecoming of anyone who puts on an umpire's uniform and dares to claim they are out there for the kids.
For our part, I was glad the whole thing was over. We never complained once about umpiring in this tournament. The closest was that clarification request which was intended harmlessly. Yet, we left this thing with a bad taste in our mouths because something was stolen from us.
One remarkable aspect of this tournament was that given this previously unannounced dislike of jeans, you would have thought they were absolute sticklers about all Pony rules. Want to get a good laugh? For the first day and a half, the tournament did not use safety bases! It isn't actually funny. Pony rules state unequivocably, "safety bases SHALL be used" yet Pony itself did not bother to use them! They rather apparently went out and purchased new ones after receiving numerous complaints!
Several collisions, some sort of serious, occurred as a result of their failure to follow their own rules. We had one collission at each of our early games, though none was serious. Another team, one that had only 10 girls, had a player collide hard with an opponent and both girls were down for ten minutes. I heard something about a concussion at another game but I cannot confirm it. Pony disobeyed its own MANDATE for safety equipment at its OWN national championship tournament! But they still found time to chastise a coach for wearing a perfectly nice pair of jeans - the sort most American white collar workers wear to work on Fridays!
I shall endeavor from this point to distance myself from Pony. Truth be told, there were any number of high caliber teams missing from this year's national tournament. They've gone to ASA, NSA and FAST. To a lesser extent, some of them went to ISA. Actually, I believe the competition at the much smaller ISA World Series was quite a bit fiercer than it was at Pony Nationals. NSA had a far better field than Pony did this year at 12U and 14U. At the older age groups, FAST is a better alternative to the more serious play in ASA.
I won't much miss Pony though I'll likely be back again given the age of my kids. But on this blog, I will never again advocate Pony. Rather, I will tell you all to play ASA, NSA, FAST and, to a far lesser extent, ISA or one of the other smaller sanctioning bodies. Pony seems to be lost in the woods of their own confusion. They need a good slapping session. I hope this was one.Labels: asa, coaching, injuries, rules, safety
Permanent Link: Interesting Pony Experiences
Random Tournament Thoughts
by Dave
Monday, June 25, 2007
I have some random thoughts regarding fastpitch tournaments which I'll share with you.
Watch the umpire, watch, watch the umpire, is he high or is he low? Is he fast or is he slow? I don't know but I dont care, we can't go anywhere!
The umpires need to walk to the field with more than just their equipment on. They need to have an idea before they call "play ball." They need to have a firm grasp on the rulebook in general, not to mention the one applicable to the kind of play they are officiating. They need to have a sense of the strike zone. They need to make sure they are of sound mind and body. They owe the hardworking girls playing the games this much. They need to earn the $35-50 they are paid for each game.
Simple Balls and StrikesRecently I watched a group of ASA umpires call a game in which there was a decidedly low strike zone. There's nothing wrong with that provided it is consistently applied. Consistency is critical. And if you're low, you ought not be high also! During one game, there was a very tall girl from, I think, Houston, Texas who had some difficulty at the plate. She was 6 foot something, perhaps 4 inches, and her legs were extremely long and thin. Her lower legs went on forever meaning her knees were pretty high. When this girl stood in there, at least from my vantage point, it was difficult to figure out exactly where her knees began because she had one of those broad-based stances and socks and equipment covering her whole legs. I watched as strike after strike was called as the ball passed mid-shin, a good 4 inches or more below her knees. That was OK since it was consistently applied. The trouble came when there was inconsistency on the high strike. If you're going to call that low of a strike zone, you've got to give somewhere upstairs. These umps did for a while but then, every once in a while, they called a bad high one. A pitch was thrown across this girl's chin and the right arm went up, punching her out. That's not fair. The strike zone cannot span toes to nose.
This was a showcase tournament and this girl was working to try to get some college coaches to notice her. But she had no chance. The inconsistentcy of the high strike had her before she came up to bat the next time. I saw three total at-bats and she looked completely confused in all of them. They called an excessively large strike zone and she went down looking twice before finally putting bat on a bad pitch up in the zone which she grounded out weakly to first. She was protecting against the first bad call made against her. Now, at first we thought this girl maybe didn't belong in this class but in hindsight, that just cannot be. Most of her teammates were destined for top 25 Div I schools. SAhe could not have been as bad as she appeared to be. The blame has to fall on the shoulders of the umps.
On another day, I watched as my girls went down looking multiple times on pitches above their mouths. I don't want my girls going down looking but I don't want them swinging at pitches in their eyes either. I was getting tense and angry. Then one of my best hitters, a girl who never goes for bad pitches, walks frequently, and puts the ball into play the rest of her at-bats, took a strike which crossed her letters, the letters printed across the top of her helmet. I made some snide comment which apparently caught the umps attention. He spoke to me between innings. He said, "coach, I'm calling that high strike because when the pitch comes in high, your girls are standing up making the pitch cross their letters." I said, "look, you call what you call this game and this tournament, but I want you to do me a favor when you get home. I want you to pull out all of your rulebooks and turn each one to the section which discusses the strike zone. Then I want you to call me if you find a single rulebook which does not discuss the zone in terms of a batter's 'natural stance' - as opposed to when she is standing tall, feet together, like she might do when someone is measuring her height. The strike zone is determined AND FIXED when the batter assumes her natural batting stance. It has nothing to do with her standing erect." This guy made a face but I hope he took my advice. The only discription of the zone I have ever seen published in a rulebook read like this:
"The strike zone is the area over any part of home plate between the batter's forward shoulder (sometimes armpit is referred to) and the top of her knees when she assumes a natural batting stance. The top of the ball must be on the horizontal plane to be called a strike. A strike is also called when either side of the ball in within the vertical plane. Where the ball contacts the ground or catcher's glove has no bearing on the actual strike zone." (emphasis my own) Note that this is a hybrid of several rulebook descriptions of the strike zone. Some of the words will not appear in any rulebook. But the phrase "when the batter assumes a natural stance" is included, with some variation, in every rulebook. And if no part of the ball crosses at the knees or shoulders/armpits, it is a ball, period. I understand how difficult it is to call balls and strikes but the umpire is paid to have reasonable judgment on this matter.
Visual CluesI was sitting in the stands near third base as the batter bunted to try to move the girls from first and second along. A fielder picked it up and turned to third. My first thoughts were this was a bad decision. There was one out already, the girl from second had been stealing bases all game, and she had a good jump on the play, and the right play on this should have been to first. I figured I was right when the runner from second slid hard, jarring the base up in the air. The defensive player had her foot on that base when it was dislodged and she began to tumble but she held her balance long enough to make the catch and then applied a needless tag to the runner on the ground. Everyone turned to the umpire though they fully expected to see him make the safe sign and were not really paying much attention to him, that is, until he punched her out! He was alone in the officiating capacity at this early round game. That's a difficult job. But there is no way he could have missed the fact that the player covering the bag had been knocked over by the sliding runner. She made a great play just to catch that ball since she was falling to the ground. The tag was meaningless since there was a force on the play but it took great athletic ability to make it. I mention this because I am left wondering if the ump called her out on the tag. He never exclaimed on the tag but you just cannot miss the kid of visual clue of the base being dislodged before the ball hit leather when you're umping a game alone.
For the sake of argument, I'm going to assume the ump called the girl out on the tag because I can't see how he saw her as out on the force with the base coverer falling down as she caught the ball. Then again, I can't see how he would have called her out on the tag with the base tumbling in foul territory. But I want to discuss this briefly because I have seen kids called out on a tag after dislodging the base like that. And this is a misapplication of the rules.
The way every rulebook I checked reads, when a base is dislodged, the base is "assumed to have followed the runner." In other words, when a runner slides hard into third, the base goes flying and the kid continues to slide, say into foul territory, she cannot be tagged out for over-sliding the base. The base is assumed to have followed her. She is the base, if you will. She cannot truly overslide the base since it has been dislodged. You cannot miss that visual clue.
On another occassion, I saw yet another visual clue that is intended to help umpires, especially when there is only one working a game. We played a tournament in which the fields were, thankfully, lined every game. I observed something which I thought at first was unusual. I noticed that the lines in the outfield had been painted into place. That's good and should cut down some of the work, right? Well, not exactly. I observed the liner dude finish the infield and then run down each of the painted lines with his chalk machine. I wondered why he bothered doing that since the paint machine was nearby and the lines were already in great shape. I realized my stupidity later when it finally occurred to me that the chalk is a great visual clue for umpires calling balls fair and foul. If you see chalk dislodged and flying in the air, the ball has to be fair since any contact with the chalk is contact with fair territory.
Most rulebooks with which I am familiar state something like fair territory is that part of the field within and including the fouls lines ... home plate, the foul lines and poles are part of fair territory. In other words, the lines and poles aren't "foul" poles and lines, they are "fair" poles and lines. If a hit ball makes contact with poles, it is fair. If it makes contact with the foul lines beyond first and third, on first contact with the ground, it must be a fair ball.
When you've got only one umpire calling a game, it is extremely difficult for him or her to make fair and foul calls on balls down the line. In the heat of the moment, not to mention the heat and exhaustion after say three games on a hot summer day, the eyes can play tricks on you. An obviously (by a couple inches) fair ball can appear to the eyes and brain as a foul ball. Vice versa is also true. And you really cannot get mad at the hot, tired single plate ump for making a mistake like this regardless of how much he or she is being paid. But when chalk flies, that's quite another deal.
I went to the snack bar to buy some chicken fingers for my daughter. I grabbed a coke for myself too. The snack bar was located in back of the four home plates at the complex. As I made my way back to the game we were watching, I knew that it was tied and this was going to be the last inning. While I was waiting at the snack bar, I observed a runner get on, get bunted to second and advance on a PB after which the batter was struck out. So I knew it was tied with a runner on third in the bottom of the last and two outs. As I was walking back, I could see the count go to 1-2 on the batter. The pitcher did a smart thing and threw outside. The batter popped a ball down into no-girl's land behind first and just out of reach of all three fielders who came together. I did not have a great view of the ball because the backstop was covered in a green film so pitchers wouldn't be distracted. But I very clearly saw the ump signal foul ball as white powder rose up in a cloud behind first. So I ran to get a better view. As I came into the clear, the white puffy cloud was still airborn and then gradually settled. I handed the chicken fingers over to my kid and turned to ask the parents of the players if what I thought I had seen was what happened. They could barely speak. One babbled something about giving that ump a piece of his mind. Most hadn't yet closed their mouths. Then the batter popped out and the game was over in a tie - this was a seeding round game. The most incredulous father stood there staring at the ump until the man went through the fence surrounding the field. The father trotted over and had a few brief words and turned back, madder than ever.
The father returned and told the other parents about his conversation. He had told the ump he had blown that call. The ump had retorted, "Get a life, you're the only person on the planet who saw it that way. That wasn't chalk, it was dirt." I understand that umps must develop A) thick skin, and B) handy retorts with which to dispense anxious parents and coaches. It was too bad this ump hadn't developed his eyes well enough to distinguish flying dirt from chalk. By the way, this ball was down the rightfield line just beyond the infield. There was no free standing dirt that far down. The field was grass covered at that point!
On another, related issue, I recently saw another misapplication of the fair/foul ball rule. In a semi-final game, the score was 0-0 or 1-1 and it went into international tiebreaker. The first batter up for the visiting team bunted a nice bunt down the third base line but it rolled just barely foul. Yet the plate umpire called it fair because a player standing in fair territory bent over and, panicking, picked it up. The defensive team freaked out and I can't say that I blame them. They were quite rude to the ump and the ump apparently had a reply ready for them.
I wasn't so much watching this game as I happened by it. I was walking past this field when I found myself near the spot where the ball was rolling so I stopped and watched it. The girl bent over and grabbed the ball and the plate ump's arm went up indicating fair at that exact moment. I realized this was a very bad call but I kept walking to get to my destination. Then I heard the uproar and turned back but was too far out of earshot to hear the words exchanged after the defensive team screamed at the ump. Later I would hear that the ump instructed the coaches not to blame him when they hadn't trained their kids properly not to touch a ball in fair territory.
I do not think I heard exactly what the ump had said but one person thought he said a kid had touched the ball in fair territory prior to the moment I saw the ball picked up. I think that explanation was wrong because we're talking about a ball that was maybe ten feet down the line. Nobody could have touched it. The ump must have said the kid touched while SHE was in fair territory. There was nobody else there. And I saw it picked up. That was done by the first player to get there. The only way I can reconcile this in my mind is to assume the ump looked at the player in fair territory and called in fair because she wasn't in foul ground. If that's not the way it happened, I apologize but I've seen this same type of call a number of times. And it is a mistake.
The way every rulebook I have ever seen is written is: A fair ball is judged according to position of the ball "not as to the position of the player" when she touches it. That's an absolute. It's the ball, not the player. I find myself sometimes forgetting this rule during the heat of games. I believe even major leaguer baseball players sometimes forget this - I've seen some jump into foul territory before grabbing the ball. I have, in the past, gotten anxious when my kids have approached the ball rolling foul from fair territory. But they do not have to have a foot or both feet in foul ground to pick up a foul ball. It's where the ball is located that matters. And I'm not an ump. Umps should know this without even contemplating it. yet time and again, I see this mistake made. It is inexcusable.
Field ConditionsAn older team in our organization played a tournament recently and I went to watch. Some of the fields were pretty good considering there was a substantial rainstorm the night before. I commended the work of the crew which must have been up and working before the sun rose that morning. Yet, there were some things about the fields which stood out to me after the tournament was over and the work of the crews had long been forgotten. The first thing which struck me was the complex at which these games were played was a rec league's home base. There were four fields in total, two of them typical skin-infield softball fields and two grass covered baseball fields complete with mounds. That's a travesty and a potentially dangerous circumstance.
My organization hosted a tournament just a few weeks ago. There is one location with two true softball fields and one very nice baseball field. We could have done things like this organization and held games there but we chose not to, instead making girls travel a few blocks between locations (to a very limited extent) in order to make sure they played exclusively on legitimate softball fields.
This organization chose to keep the girls together in one location but to play half their games on baseball fields. Softball is not meant to be played on a grass infield. Everything about the game changes when you do it on grass. The ball skips rather than bounces. Grounders slow to less than half the speed. Play is slowed and runners make first easily on grounders to either side of the shortstop. It is not softball as we know it.
Worse still is the existence of a mound on the field. Many places my kids and their teams have played have "shaved" pitching mounds off before conducting tournaments. That's expensive but it is a requirement of conducting a reasonably high level fastpitch tournament. That's because the mound itself changes the pitcher's delivery and makes it dangerous to field balls in the event she has to go back.
I can't express how upset it makes me when I see a kid from any team have difficulty hitting the strike zone because the mound throws off her delivery. Once recently while watching my own kid's game, I looked over to see how another team was doing on an adjacent field, a baseball field. "Hey, I know that pitcher. She's very good," I thought. Between our innings, I watched her first one in the circle. She threw ball after ball above the strike zone. I couldn't imagine why she was doing this since I know her to have excellent control. So I walked over to get a better look. I saw her go into her wind up and she was all off-balance because the pitching plate had to be placed on a slight hill, about three or four inches above where it should be AND the whole pitching area was slopped downwards. She had to adjust but it wasn't fair to expect her to adjust that much. She had a bad game and her team lost to an inferior one with a poor pitcher. The poor pitcher didn't have to adjust nearly as much as the good one since she hadn't locked down her mechanics yet anyway. My first thoughts were I hope this experience doesn't throw off the kid having trouble. My second thoughts were I hope she doesn't get hurt trying to modify her delivery. It took her a lot to get her release points back later that day when she played on a legitimate field. But she didn't get hurt, thank goodness.
I've witnessed pitchers get hurt due to the existence of a pitcher's mound for reasons other than changing their delivery. Often when a ball is popped up right behind the pitcher, she's the only one that can get to it. I've seen far too many kids fall down as they walked backwards to play the pop and tripped over the whole in the mound made by baseball pitchers or the second rubber still cemented into the ground. It would be a small matter to break an ankle on a field like that. It isn't just something everyone should get used to. It is downright dangerous. Girls Fastpitch Softball is played on a flat, dirt field, with one pitcher's plate, period. If you can't find a location without grass infields and pitcher's mounds, don't hold a tournament.
My second observations regarding field conditions has to do with the overall condition of fields used to host big, competitive tournaments. I have seen Herculean efforts made by the crew to get fields in playable condition. But sometimes things are forgotten. Most effort is expended on the infield. And sometimes nobody walks the outfield to locate problem areas. This can cause extremely dangerous conditions for outfielders. Sometimes there can be a minor sinkhole or large mud puddle right in areas where fielders are likely to be running without looking at the ground like along the base lines. That's a bad situation and one that can sometimes be rectified by a crew. But if the crew and tournament director are not around, there is nothing the teams can do, except play in the dangerous conditions. My one word of advice is good tournaments always have an easily accessible site manager who knows where a crew and the director can be found.
Finally, there is no denying that in fastpitch softball, pitching is the critical, deciding factor in most games. Aside from not having baseball pitching mounds on the field, more effort needs to be made cleaning up the pitcher's area before and between games. Holes must be filled and not merely combed over, pulling in loose dirt to fill the empty spots.
We played at a place this year which had a 35 foot rubber in front of the 40 foot one. During 40 foot games, the organization put a bunch of soft, loose dirt on top of the 10U rubber. Between innings, the ump kicked loose dirt back on top of it. This accomplishes absolutely nothing. The only way a 40 foot game ought to be played on a field like that is slow pitch. Fastpitch windmilling is an intense physical exercise using explosive force. Many pitcher aged in the 12U ands 14U bracket perform their leg drives on at least some pitches in that 5 foot area where the 35 foot rubber is located. Either the thing has to be removed or games shouldn't be played there. This one was cemented into the ground and could not be removed. OK, that's tough, so DON'T PLAY THERE!
And even otherwise very good fields can get substantially beat up. The area where pitchers pushoff and land gets the most abuse. You can't just rake dirt over these spots. Good tournaments have mound dirt on site and pounding machines to firm it in place. And reputable fields use thinker dirt that adheres to itself when wet, at least in the batter's and pitcher's areas. The kind of sandy, loose, dry stuff is cheaper but it needs to be replaced almost constantly.
Everyone gets tiredIt isn't difficult to imagine how tired the players get when they play two, three, four or more games in a single day. Even we parents get pretty darn tired. I know many times when I get home from a tournament at which I've done nothing more than sat on my duff, maybe eaten a few french fries or bad hot dogs, and talked amongst friends, I often fall asleep hours before my normal bed time. The umps often have to officiate more games in a day than I watch as a fan. They must get very tired. On seeding days, this may be more so since there are often games every hour and a half or three quarters. Many of the tournaments we play will have 6, 8 or more games at the same location in a day. And most often, the same guy, gal or duo call the whole shottin' match. That's really tough. These crews ought to be split so an ump gets one on and one off.
That's seeding days but I've witnessed the same sort of thing happen on elimination days. Two guys handle everything at one particular field with no more than 15 minutes to towel off, get a drink and maybe sit out of the sun. When we see people do that in other walks of life, we assume their general judgment is impaired. Yet we allow or require umps to get to the point of heat exhaustion and still make calls potentially critical to the outcome of a game. And some of these people are not in very good physical condition.
One of my daughters participated in a game at Pony Nationals last year at which there was an umpire who, judging by his looks, must have been almost 80 years old. As I told you shortly afterwards, Pony has some of the best and some of the worst umpires I have ever seen at their national tournament. This fellow was off the scales at the bottom. I got upset over some of the calls he made and decided to watch him on every pitch. He was obviously suffering from the hot weather. On more than one occassion, I saw him staring at the ground in front of his toes as the pitcher went into her windup, and that was with a runner on base. One some occassions, he didn't look up even when the pitch was thrown. More than once, he fixed his gaze to the ground through consecutive pitches, never even looking up after the pitch was thrown, call made, ball returned to pitcher and second pitch thrown, etc. I began to wonder if he was going to make it through the game. He did, but I was a little frightened for him.
My conclusion here is, what I said before, these folks should be given ample breaks in accordance with their physical condition, and, more importantly, they must be supervised in some fashion. Had any supervisor been at this game, they would have had this guy pulled from the field, perhaps given medical attention, and another ump sent to replace him. He didn't belong on the field. That sort of situation needs to be addressed. One way it could be done is via annual medical release forms for all umps. Such forms should specify the possible game conditions and require a medical doctor to state affirmatively that this or that fellow or gal is up to the task. Doctors wouldn't do that in certain cases like this fellow I saw at Pony Nationals. One day, one of these fellows is going to die at the fields and somebody is going ot be sued into submission for allowing him to go out there under these circumstances.
ConclusionThere you have some random tournament thoughts I had this morning. I'm sure many of you have your own tournament observations and experiences. That's part of what makes this so interesting and fun. I do want to say that I'd rather have my kids playing than not. I'd rather they play on lousy fields with bad umps than not play at all. But there's a fair amount of money kicking around this show. And the value is a bit inconsistent. While I do want my kids to play at any cost, I believe it is only fair to charge in accordance with the product being offered. A $450 tournament with crummy fields or third rate umps is not a bargain. One with both is a ripoff. Umps need to come mentally and physically prepared to earn their $35-50 per game - that can, by the way, sometimes add up to several hundred bucks in a day. Tournament hosts must make sure their fields are in playable condition and not baseball diamonds filled with health hazards. They need to be accessible when games are going so that problems can be dealt with. And organizations hosting large tournaments involving big numbers of umpires should make some sort of mechanism available so that grievances (not game protests) can be aired and problems avoided in succeeding years.Labels: rules, umpiring
Permanent Link: Random Tournament Thoughts
Just Tape It And Get Out There
by Dave
Thursday, June 07, 2007
During a preseason practice, my daughter took a bad hop grounder and busted her throwing hand index finger. It didn't cause that much trouble for her in terms of playing the field or batting. Her throwing was a little off, lacking the velocity she usually had but she was still able to get runners out during scrimmages from her normal position at third. Her hitting actually improved since the broken finger caused her to grip the bat less tightly, something I had been trying to get her to do for a while. But the real problem was she was unable to pitch her normal 4 times a week offseason regimen. The finger hurt whenever she tried to throw the fastball and screw. We had an early season tournament in which she was playing up an age group and while she was warming up to pitch, the pain reduced her to tears. We had to figure something out or shut her down for a couple weeks.
We decided to give the kid a break for a week and then give it another try. Her pitching coach came up with the idea of taping the finger for lessons. That seemed to do the trick as she said it still hurt but it didn't get any worse as she went along. The coach suggested just taping the finger for workouts and not pitching any scrimmages or tournaments untilo she could pitch without the tape. "You can't pitch tournaments with anything on your pitching hand," he said. "I know," I agreed. Everybody knows that, right? You know that, don't you? OK then, cite the rule!
The other night while watching the Women's College World Series (WCWS), there was a fair amount of discussion regarding Taryne Mowatt, Arizona's ace and some blister problems she had during this year. It got so bad during the WCWS that she was unable to locate most of her pitches and had to rely on her changeup more than I have ever seen any college pitcher rely on it. I think almost half of her pitches during the final series were changes.
One item that was discussed briefly in this context was the fact that she was wearing white tape on her pitching hand to protect the blister. She said something about the ball getting bloody as a result of the blister during some games - kind of puts the "Curt Schilling bloody sock" thing to shame. In any event, I was surprised to learn that she was allowed to wear the tape on her pitching hand so I looked it up.
According to NCAA rules, "The pitcher chall not wear any item on the pitching fingers, hand, wrist, forearm or thighs that an umpire considers distracting. This includes a batting glove, sweatband and loose lacing on a glove, or ball-colored logos. Exception: The pitcher's fingers, hand, wrist, forearm or elbow may be taped for injury, providing such tape is a neutral color." (Rule 10, section 13(c))
So wearing tape is permitted in NCAA play provided the tape is a "neutral color." Personally, I do not believe white tape is neutral since it contrasts with skin color but the umps didn't make her change it. For your information, I have definitely seen medical tape in skin color available at just about any drug store. I would advice college coaches, trainers, etc. to get some since it is just possible that a particular umpire might not allow a pitcher to use white tape due to the contrast.
This was the first time I had ever seen a pitcher allowed to wear tape while pitching in a game. In tournaments, we've been forced to remove both black and white batting gloves from the glove hand because umpires have objected while claiming that a pitcher isn't allowed to wear anything extraneous. This caused us some trouble as one pitcher's glove had cracked and was digging a sore into her glove hand causing excessive distraction while in the circle. But we didn't dispute it because "everyone knows you can't wear anything while pitching." When I saw Mowatt out there with tape and then checked the NCAA rules, I decided I better check other rules as well.
I can't find an official ASA rulebook on the web and I don't possess one, so I can't check there. I decided to look at the NSA rulebook which states, "During the game, the pitcher may not use tape or other substances on the ball, pitching hand or fingers; nor shall any player apply foreign substance to the ball. With the umpire's approval, powdered resin may be used to dry the hand. The wearing of any item on the pitching hand, wrist, or arm that may be distracting to the batter will not be allowed." (Rule 6, Sec. 8)
I wasn't able to find a current PONY rulebook online, 2005 is available but I couldn't find 2007. However, I possess a hard copy of the current one so I decided to check there as well. PONY says, "The pitcher shall not, at any time during the game, be allowed to use tape or any other foreign substances upon the ball, the pitching hand or fingers nor shall any other player apply a foreign substance to the ball. Under the supervision and control of the umpire, powdered resin may be used to dry the hands ... A pitcher shall not wear any item on the pitching hand, wrist, forearm, elbow or thighs, which may, in the umpire's judgment, be distracting. Batting gloves may not be worn on the pitching hand."
So, there you have it. NCAA rules specifically allow pitchers with injuries to wear tape (neutrally colored tape) on the pitching hand if there is an injury. Youth rules, as far as I can tell, do not allow this. I have no idea, off the top of my head, if high school rules are closer to NCAA rules or the ones applying to youth tournament ball. And this raises an important issue to me.
If you compare the NSA and PONY rulebooks on this issue, the differences are diction-related items. There is a "that" here vs. a "which" there and other such meaningless differences. The differences are almost comical. They imply plagarism which has been adjusted so nobody can claim copyright infringement. That's ridiculous.
We, in youth fastpitch, need one common set of rules across the broad spectrum of rules for at least the elements which are common. I understand that while college uses the 43 foot pitching distance, most high school uses 40. Most youth is changing to 43 feet this year at least at the championship level. Personally, I'd like to see the distances identical across all types of competition based on age category. I watched one high school pitcher bounce back and forth from 40 to 43 during the early part of this year's season. That's a bit much since her movement pitches lacked the pinpoint accuracy required for success. But I'm willing to stand back and watch that happen - I do think the distances will become identical across the different types of play over the next two years.
There are other rules which vary according to the type of plkay one engages in. ASA and NSA play require two feet on the pitching plate. The high school games I have seen do not. PONY doesn't require it either. I have observed so much crow hopping in one sort of play or another that I have begun simply "caw-cawing" at certain games. I have watched pitchers walk into pitches at certain competitions, complained to the umps and been told that this is perfectly legal in this particular kind of competition. I've watched pitchers take the signal from the back of the circle, walk slowly to the rubber, and then, without stopping go directly into their wind-ups. There are a million little things which one day is illegal and another day perfectly fine. It is confusing as heck to me and I wonder what that says about a 10 - 14 year old trying to learn to do things the right way.
Last year at a nationakl competition, my kid was pitching and the coaches from the other team watched her very closely. After a couple of pitches to the first batter, they requested a conference with the plate ump and then discussed what they thought she was doing illegal. After severalo tries for different elements of her wind-up, the coaches got the ump's attention about one thing. They alleged she was bring her hands together twice during the wind-up. I have it on tape and can prove that she really was not but it was close enough for the ump to warn her. This threw her into a state of confusion and her coach could not go out and talk to her without being charged for a conference. I recognize that kids ought to be taught the right way and in a national tournament, there is no room for being nice. But these adults decided to try to get into the pitcher's head so their team could win a game. That's reprehensible. And it didn't work. She shut them down completely!
To conclude this piece and get back to my other more mundane responsibilities, I would just like to put this out there. There ought to be one single set of rules for pitching in fastpitch the way the rules are mostly identical in baseball. All this nonsense we see with varying rules about the whole pitching motion ius counter-productive for our sport. In basketball, we see onbe set of rules for international play and a different set for the American amateur and professional games. In softball at the highest levels we see this too. Just what exactly is the purpose of that? Who is served? In the amateur age-group ranks there are different rules for pitching. Why and who is served by that? Can't we all just get along?Labels: pitching, rules
Permanent Link: Just Tape It And Get Out There
NCAA 10 Second Rule
by Dave
Thursday, May 31, 2007
If you're watching the NCAA tournament on ESPN - probably the best softball you'll see this year although it's better live than on TV, you can't have missed the relatively high number of 10 second rule calls. I admit to having never paid attention to this rule before this year. A few weeks ago it came to my attention as I watched it called against Tennessee's Monica Abbott. In the first couple of games I've watched so far, I think I've seen it called 3 times. Once it resulted in a walk. [; I don't actually care much for the rule but I figure I better at least try to gain an understanding.
I may not have heard her correctly but Michele Smith briefly discussed the 10 second rule. She said something about the pitcher having five seconds to throw the pitch. That didn't sound like a "ten second rule" to me. Then Michele Smith's co-announcer referred to it as a "5 second rule." That kind of confused me so I looked the thing up.
The NCAA rulebook is online here: NCAA 2007 Rules and Interpretations so you can read it for yourself. The relevant section is indeed entitled the 10 second rule." The rule reads as follows:
"Time Allowed Between Pitches
Section 18. The pitcher must be on the pitcher's plate and the batter in the batter's box within 10 seconds after the pitcher receives the ball or after the umpire calls, "Play ball." After both the pitcher and batter are in position, the pitcher has five seconds to begin her pitching motion.
Effect - If five seconds have elapsed and the pitcher has not yet pitched, an additional ball shall be awarded to the batter. If two minutes have elapsed and the pitcher has not yet pitched, a forfeited game shall be declared by the umpire crew in favor of the team at bat.
Exception: Intentionally violating the rule in order to walk the batter without pitching shall not result in a ball being awarded to the batter, but each runner shall advance one base without liability to be put out. On the first offense, the umpire shall issue a warning to the offending player. On the second offense, the offending player shall be ejected from the game."
There are rules relating to the batter's part of the obligation to be ready within ten seconds. And there are, of course, penalties. You can check those out for yourself on the NCAA's site.
The rulebook says in its points of emphasis:
"The 10-second pitching rule, which was amended in 2006, was often misunderstood last season so it is included in this point of emphasis even though there is no change for 2007. The amended rule specifies that the pitcher and the batter are both responsible to be in position 10 seconds after the pitcher receives the ball (in the pitching circle) from the catcher. Once all players are in position - whether that is four seconds or seven seconds later, or 10 seconds later - the pitcher have five more seconds to start the pitching motion.
An often-mentioned complaint to the committee was that the pitcher's delivery time was reduced by this change. This is not true. Under the previous rule, the pitcher had 10 seconds from the time pitcher received the ball from the catcher to start her motion. Now she has 10 seconds to be in position after receiving the ball and another five to start the pitching motion. In essence, she has been given more time to deliver the pitch.
Another often-mentioned complaint was that the change was made to placate television interests. This is also not true. The rule was amended primarily because the committee wanted to set a clear, enforceable standard of not only the pitcher's time requirement, but also to establish one for the batter. It was often observed that a pitcher who legally used the entirety of her time to deliver the pitch was hampered by the movement of the batter at the last second. The cat-and-mouse games were undesirable and unnecessary, and this change was also intended to eliminate them. It is the committee's intention to annually review published game times and listen to coaches', student-athletes' and umpires' opinions on the flow of the game to monitor the effect of this change. If you have an opinion or suggestion, please contact a committee member so your thoughts are brought forward at the summer committee meeting."
I can certainly understand the desire to avoid that stupid game where the pitcher waits until the batter is uncomfortably stiff in the box or the batter rerquests time and steps out right before the pitch is thrown. This kind of stuff is fitting for major league baseball where the games take three plus hours and there is more "show" than "big" being fed the fan. But in a sport like ours, I'm glad this kind of bush league stuff is prohibited.
That being said, I do have a problem with the number of times I have seen it called and the effect it has had on several games. In this sport where 1-0 is not unusual - certainly not as unusual as it is in baseball - I think we need to think about the frequency with which penalties are called. The game of professional football has been altered to a point at which it has become as boring as the worst parts of Court TV because the officials feel they have to stop play and recite the rulebook every couple of plays. It's no longer a sport. It is now moments of action between legal lectures.
Softball is a fast moving game which generally is completed in under 2 hours. It is fairly common for a game to be over in an hour and a half. One walk, one hit, one steal, one run can determine the outcome of a contest. I do think sometimes pitchers or batters stall and I would like it to stop. It isn't enough to have a non-specific stalling rule. We do need some sort of finite time limit but I'm not sure 5 seconds is enough.
Also, in the broadcasts I saw, it was noted that several coaches were asked about the rule and replied something like, "I don't understand it, if you do, please explain it to me." I think that may be a little disingenuous but it does speak to the issue of sports governing bodies making absolutely sure that participants at all levels fully understand the rules. usually with something as potentially impactful as this, the overseeing body makes a concerted effort to discuss the change or more aggressive application of the rule during the preseason and then the thing is applied aggressively early on. That way, long before a championship tournament is played, everyone knows about it, fully understands how it will be applied and the thing doesn't have much of an impact. For example, recently the NCAA decided that in basketball, the act of calling timeout when a player was in the air, going out of bounds, had been abused so they changed the rule. There was tons of discussion and officials applied it vigorously during the early part of the season. By the time the tournament came around, no player was ever seen trying to call time out while jumping or falling out of bounds.
In conclusion, I now not only think I understand the "ten second rule" but also I understand the motivation. Coaches should have been aware of this but I suspect more could have been done to educate them and the players. This rule, even if it didn't change this year, was far more vigorously and frequently applied. Unfortunately, vfrom what I have seen, it was applied more late in the season than it was earlier and players continue to fall victim to it even at the highest levels. There's something wrong with that and I hope the situation improves next year. I don't enjoy games dominated by seemingly insignificant rules and the officials employed to enforce them.Labels: rules
Permanent Link: NCAA 10 Second Rule
What Are They Hiding?
by Dave
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Yesterday I posted something which pertained to, at least partially, a rule issue. I had some first hand experience with the matter in question so I felt I could discuss it freely and with confidence that I was right. A visitor wrote in regarding the rule as it pertains to Little League. Unfortunately I am no longer participating in LL so I do not have a current rulebook. I'm not sure whether, if somewhere in this mess, I still possess prior years' rulebooks and I'm not about to go hunting for them. So I figured I would locate the current rulebook online and see if I could find the particular wording I was referring to so I could point the visitor to the right place. That was wrong figuring! Little League does not publish their rulebook online. Not only that, they sick their league officials and attorneys upon anyone who dares to publish it via the web. That's asinine. Little League loses a lot from failing to publish their rules openly and gains nothing by preventing others from doing so. And they're not the only organization who does not bother to publish their rules via the web.
We certainly live in the information age. There is so much stuff online, it boggles the mind. My kids come home from school with all sorts of research projects on things about which I have no knowledge. They might ask about "quick sand," African Dwarf Frogs, the atomic weight of hydrogen, or maybe the principal product of Nigeria (which by the way is uranium). I whip out my trusty laptop and head for Google, Wikipedia, or some such and often can answer their questions within moments.
I have to admnit that my second favorite is looking up stuff, any stuff, on the internet. In a previous lifetime I honed my skills at keyword searches by looking through legal documents in order to find loopholes in tax law! Now I spend hours and hours viewing expert analysis on anthropogenic causes for greenhouse warming, tracking the latest tropical depression, or dispelling myths I learned as fact in youth.
I used to just watch ballgames at night. Now I never watch a game without my laptop. I'm almost always checking to see what this hitter does against lefties or righties, with 0-1 counts, with runners in scoring position. I knew I was in trouble one night when, with a score of 10-0, I was busy trying to locate some rookie's minor league batting average.
I use the internet for almost everything. And when I am about to write something for this blog, I usually spend the first hour trying to see if anybody has written anything on the subject, checking rules, or just surfing the latest college and/or high school scores while I get my thoughts together. There's very little limit to what you can find on the web.
There are any number of sports rulebooks available via the internet. The NCAA doesn't seem to have any problem sharing their rules with you. Not only do they have the current year's rules online but they maintain several prior years' as well. See: 2007 NCAA Softball Rules, 2006 NCAA Softball Rules, 2006 NCAA Softball Rules. There are certainly rules which are common regardless of which level of play you are interested in but the NCAA definitely has some different play rules than say Little League. When I see something in college play which I thought wasn't allowed, I like to check the NCAA rules so I can gain an understanding. For example, when I was completely new to the sport, I saw what I thought were foulk balls on drag bunts with two strikes and the ump didn't call the batter out. I didn't understand and thought maybe fouled third strikes were not outs in softball. After going through the NCAA rulebook, I saw that I had to be wrong so I continued to search. Before long I cam einto spiritual contact with something called a slap hit. After I understood that a bit more, I finally understood that was what I witnessed.
In terms of youth and high school softball, I found the ASA has a rulebook onloine but it doesn;t contain playing rules per se. Most of what I saw related to the running of the organization itself and tournaments under its sanction. NSA publishes their rules in a very useful format, broken down by changes, updates, casebook, and current rules for each of fast and slow pitch, etc. See the NSA Rule Book page for more information and to download the books. Pony (Protect Our Nations Youth) also has their rulebook online.
I own copies of several rulebooks including PONY, ISA, and others but if I want to take a look through them, I have to locate my copy. The ISA rulebook is someplace in my car. Pony is in the kitchen but my wife moves it frequently so I can't say definitively where it is at this precise moment. The older NCAA books are in the closet and I can see one of them right now. Somewhere there are old copies of the Little League book but I may have thrown them out. I can;t be sure unless I spend a lot of time looking for a book whether I have it or not. So, even though I own a current Pony rulebook, I most often look through the online version.
I get angry when I can't locate something on the web which I think should be there. Such is the case with rules for Little League, Babe Ruth, and high school. I looked to find the Babe Ruth rulebook even though we do not ever play BR. I think it is useful sometimes to just take a peak. But Babe Ruth does not publish their book online. High school ball is governed by rules propagated by the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS). NFHS does publish their book online but you have to be a member of the organization to view it. That isn't very helpful to me. I'm not a member.
It seems to me a small matter to have these things online. On another site I run, I've made a living out of digitizing several hundred books covering hundreds of thousands of pages. A softball rulebook is maybe 100 pages. it would take me less than an hour to get something like that online and it would only take up maybe a few megabytes worth of server space. The effort to get pages online wouldn't be worth writing about. The server space would be inconsequential. Yet these organizations choose to not place their books online for unknown reasons.
That would be bad enough but the actions of Little League take the cake. Some few enterprizing folks have taken the time to digitize LL's rulebooks over the years. Every time, LL takes action to threaten these folks and insist the books be taken offline. Their executives contact the web site owner and when that doesn't work quickly, their attorneys get involved. It is rather ugly and unsporting of them. To see an example of what I'm talking about, check out this site and what the webmaster has written about how LL reacted when he dared to publish their rulebook in 2005: http://www.angelfire.com/ia3/littleleaguerules/officialrules.htm
I do not have any interest in starting a grassroots campaign to try to get these organizations to put their rules online. My thoughts are:
1) Many organizations already put their books online.
2) It is silly not to put yours on the web.
3) But you look really foolish, dare I say childish, when you bully people who take the time and effort to make it available.
One day Little League will grow up. For now, they remain a relatively small minded organization which can;t see for looking. They made some positive changes to their rules such as using the 12 inch ball in 12U competition this year. But they continue to hide their rulebook so those who are not officially involved with them cannot see it. And they bullied the poor soul who bothered to make the book available. That's pretty darn silly.Labels: rules
Permanent Link: What Are They Hiding?
Rule Uniformity
by Dave
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
I suppose it is the German part of my heritage which cries out for uniformity, organization, and order. I like everything in somewhat neat rows. Incongruity gets under my skin and makes me feel like the planet is lopsided. For example, it bothered me to no end when league ages in the various fastpitch softball sanctioning bodies were not perfectly aligned. A kid might play 12U in one sort of play like Babe Ruth while stuck in 10U in Little League, or vice versa - I forget which way that went. Other misalignments also got under my skin but it seems like some of these are starting to disappear. Hopefully that trend will continue. But, as always, there's more work to be done.
Last year, for the 2006 playing season, Little League changed its softball age groups to align them with the other bodies. They adopted the calendar year for age group cutoff purposes. This was a very good thing. Girls who played 12U in Babe Ruth- or ASA-sanctioned play would also play 12U in Little League. The first year no doubt caused some pain as girls who had always been together during rec season were pulled apart by the happenstance of their birth dates. But after the first year, this sort of problem gently disappeared or at least the players got used to it the same way they got used to the original cutoff dates. And with respect to at least that one factor, everything was more perfectly aligned.
In August of 2006, Little League changed its rules for the 2007 season with respect to ball size. That Little League World Series of 12 and under girls you saw on ESPN was played using an 11 inch ball while those 12U ASA, NSA, Pony, etc. tournaments at the local fields were played with a 12 inch one.
It offended almost everyone I knew within the sport, particularly parents and coaches, that girls of the same age weren't all playing with the same sized ball. But the ones it hurt the most were the girls themselves who actually played with the 11 in the spring and into the LL international tournament, changed to the 12 for late summer and fall tournaments and leagues, and then changed back again to the 11 in the spring. There is quite a difference between the balls when it comes not just to pitching but also hitting, fielding and throwing. It is a difficult adjustment, though one that can be overcome given a few months. But nobody had a few months. A player had at most a week or two to acclimate themselves to the bigger, heavier ball. It just didn't seem fair to make kids go back and forth. Little League has now fixed this incongruity.
For the ball size reason alone, I believe many people kept their kids out of Little League. While that was not my entire motivation, it definitely was an important factor. I wasn't going to allow my 11 year old pitcher to practice from July to March with a 12 inch ball and then ruin her motion and lose her release point to adjust down to the 11. Another reason I removed my kids from LL play involve the way the international tournament is set up and the way different organizations follow those rules. There are other reasons but I don't have time or space.
Little League rules state a particular date (I don't have that handy at the moment) after which a league all-star team can be put together for play in the tournament. Many leagues, like our local one, follow this rule to the "T" and do not so much as allow the girls to practice together until after that date. Typically, our rec league ends a week or two before the tournament organization date. Generally league officials get together shortly after the end of the season and pick some coaches from each division to coach the team. Then the team is put together based on evaluations of the girls made by coaches on the final day of play. Finally, about a week or two before the first game, the girls begin practicing together.
When I helped out with a tournament team a few years ago, we were able to schedule just 6 practices, each for two hours. And the weather refused to cooperate so we got in maybe three sessions. Needless to say, our girls were not well prepared. They were unaccustomed to each other. While I would stack up our kids against anyone we saw, they really could have used a month or two to get ready for competition. They're all good ball players but they aren't used to even throwing the ball around the infield to each other.
Contrast this with the fact that many of the top LL tournament teams play together under other sanctioning bodies such as ASA and Pony during the rest of the year. They're not supposed to under LL rules but there are ways around the strict letter of the law. For example, while the league body itself cannot sanction a "travel team" comprised of participant players, some enterprising soul can put together an ASA team of his darling daughter's favorite friends from the all-star team and play a dozen tournaments long before Little League rules kick in. Many of the top teams do just this.
A few local leagues are so dominated by one or a few parents that these characters are able to hand pick the all-star team from the rec league draft in January and then play together as a unit for all of rec season. They don't get challenged but they do get used to each other. Then maybe in the summer or fall, the coach contacts the parents and asks if these same kids want to play in some other local league. They accomplish the same result as would occur if Little League just completely abolished the organization limitations.
Another part of the LL rules says girls can't play other competition during the tournament. if a great pitcher were to compete in one of the state championships, win or pitch a perfect game and make the local paper, you can bet somebody would report them to LL. So what they do is try to find the best available teams around to conduct frequent scrimmages. This gives them the added edge they need to win big LL tournament games.
And while we're at it, let me point out another LL tournament rule which bothers me. Little League applies baseball mentality to softball but limiting pitchers to an extent not seen anywhere else. If a girl pitches two innings in game 1, she can't pitch again until game 3 and only if sufficient time has passed. That may be off by a little. I'm getting these LL rules a little confused because I haven't been involved in it for several years but I do know that there are significant pitching limitations. Compare that with tournament fastpitch in which a girl can pitch 18 innings or more per day if necessary, and if she can handle it. throwing windmill just doesn't wear out the body the way throwing overhand does. My pitching daughters can pitch for several days consecutively if they need to but throwing overhand for an hour will wear their arms out. Still LL keeps the pitching limitations in place. I expect that will be the next rule to go but you never know.
Our town league board members won't even creatively break these rules (or wouldn't until recently) because they are letter-of-the-law type people. Instead they chose to stand around complaining about what other towns did. Then some competitive guy who got bored watching his daughter's team get bumped out of the tournament in the first round each year decided to put together a travel team so they could play more games well into the summer. Now that age division is the only one which ever gets past the first round. And this year it seems as if the program will be expanded to other divisions. They don't use the same fields. The "travel group" gets ASA insurance, plays on other available fields, and practices together some during the winter months as well as all other seasons. They usually find more competitive spring and fall leagues to play aside from the rec league. So by the time the LL tournament gets going, they are fairly competitive.
Trust me in my conjecture that this is very common within Little League. If you put global positioning devices on every LL all-star kid whose team finishes in the top 50 to 100 teams in the tournament, you would find a lot of the kids from each team together in the same places - indoor and outdoor softball facilities - for much of the year. Somehow LL needs to find a way to address this. I don't have any easy answer to the issue. I'd prefer if kids were allowed to play more rather than less. I realize this creates two classes of rec player - some who are "all-stars" and many who are not - but the reality is some kids are really into this sport and many are not into it to that degree.
Little League is not the only place where such differences abound. High school ball has its own interesting variant on the theme. Our state's high school teams have clearly delineated seasons. This is important in as much as it creates a better situation for kids who play multiple sports. I'm an advocate for affording kids the opportunity to play different sports in all three high school seasons. I grew up in the days when "athletes" were those who played soccer or football in the fall, basketball or wrestling in the winter, and baseball in the spring, all for school teams. These kids relied on the clearly demarcated seasons in order to be able to play their three favorite sports. The day after football ended, basketball practice started up. The day after basketball was over, baseball began.
Even with the clearly demarcated seasons, conflicts developed. For example, our basketball team was not very good. So members of the team were freed up in time to go out for baseball. If they had been good enough to play into the championship season, these kids would have been two weeks late to their first baseball practice. Kids who were more successful in, for example, wrestling, were hurt by the overrun between the two seasons.
Unfortunately, I didn't play basketball. Instead I competed in swimming. Whereas I never missed more than a swimming practice or two due to the length of the football season, the same could not be said of the transition from swimming into baseball. Our swimming championship season extended a full week into baseball practice. But more importantly, one didn't compete in swimming merely by making the high school team. If you wanted to be reasonably competitive in high school competition, you had to also swim for a club team long before you ever got to high school and well into your high school career. Our club team's season didn't end until baseball was just about over. The choice was A) play two sports badly or B) get serious about one or the other. I chose option B.
Also, sometimes sports injuries complicate the situation. My sophomore football season ended with a broken elbow which was still healing a full month into high school winter swimming practice season, not to mention my club team's fall practices. At that point I had to make a decision to give up all other sports other than summer baseball. But I'm going too far away from the theme. So, let me get back to high school softball.
Our high school softball teams are allowed to begin formal practices in a couple weeks. Before that time, coaches are not allowed to coach at anything even remotely similar to a practice and they can't use school owned equipment at any disorganized casual get-together which just happens to involve the starting varsity line-up. Still, somehow, certain things just happen. For instance, all the girls on the team somehow learned about this one particular travel team which a parent of a kid on varsity just happened to put together. They play together all summer long. Then in the fall, another ad-hoc organization puts together a team which is made up of kids who all happen to be from the same high school team. They play double headers against these other teams which just happen to also consist of kids from a single high school varsity team. During the winter, there is this entire 18U league whose team names ring familiar bells as well. If a school team were named the St. Joseph-Farmington Angels, this other non-high school winter team might be called "SJFAST" or something along those lines. You often see HS team coaches visit such venues but they're only there because they love the sport so much!
Recently, one of my kids' travel teams began its indoor workouts. I know - it's late for that but I don't have a say - my team started in November. This other team uses one of the few facilities in the area which can accommodate throwing drills. We arrived at the facility a little early to do a half hour of pitching. When we arrived, there was another team using the throwing drill area. For a moment I didn't realize who it was but then I began recognizing people. It was a local high school team which was gathered together at an ad hoc get together. The practice was being conducted by parents. This is a very common thing.
There's nothing unusual about this sort of practice and I don't necessarily think it's bad. There are just some sports which are too difficult to play for only 3 months of the year. Can you imagine a golfer who only plays the game during the spring? How about a tennis player? The same applies to my old sport of swimming. Like I said a moment ago, if you want to compete in high school swimming, you must practice year-round. You can't just jump into the pool in November and expect to get in decent enough shape to win races. These are all individual sports which don't require working with others. You can play golf by yourself (or with a private coach) to get ready for the spring season. The same is true of many other individual sports which have developed over the years into full year practice and competition schedules. But training for swimming, competing as an individual in tennis or golf, or wrestling with a club team are not analogous to playing team baseball or fastpitch softball.
The diamond sports require team work. It doesn't matter how much a kid practices on her own when the issue is defensing the bunt or relaying cutoffs from the outfield properly. There are other intangibles which teams which play together often during the whole year can achieve which teams that do not, cannot. There is a decided advantage to knowing that second baseman Alexandra tends to throw the ball two or three feet up the line at third when she takes a cutoff from the right fielder to her right and then turns to throw. Similarly, there are a thousand other situations which are different when you play with different girls. You can't play high level softball at the top of your game when you only get together with a particular group of kids for 3 months a year.
On the other hand, this raises a whole host of ethical issues. When we teach sports, we have to wonder exactly what life lessons we are teaching our kids. Are we teaching them to break the rules subtly when it suits our end goals? Are we teaching them any enduring lessons in morality? I try to not bring politics into this blog because it is largely not relevant to any discussion of girls fastpitch softball. Yet, it bothered me to no end when Nancy Pelosi promoted expansion of the minimum wage to include all US territories EXCEPT Samoa. In Samoa, 90% of all employed persons work for one of two fish packing plants. The US federal minimum wage does not apply to them. And both are owned by California-based large companies which contribute to political campaigns. California just happens to be Nancy's state!
Another problem evolves when high school softball teams remained semi-organized out of season. Under these circumstances high school coaches tell their players on the QT that they should play for this team or that, or that they cannot practice with their high level travel teams during the season.
When I was a freshman in high school, I was made aware that certain players on the football team would be conducting conditioning get-togethers at a local field on certain nights. I was officially told that I was welcome to participate but that the team could not require me to attend. I decided that I didn't need to go to them until my father convinced me otherwise! And when I arrived at these impromptu workouts something strange happened. Somebody was taking attendance! Had I not gone there to workout with the team, the coach would have known. And there would have been hell to pay.
So a girl can decide that she will not participate with her high school softball team's impromptu workouts and, ahem, practices, but she may find herself, seemingly unfairly, playing JV ball when she is good enough to start or even star on the varsity team. This can be more than unfair. It can be detrimental to a kid's development as a player and can hinder her ability to obtain a college softball scholarship if that's what her ability and desires might otherwise dictate.
I can think of at least one girl who pitches for a showcase team which practices year round. In January when other teammates are working out in some place under some parents' supervision, she's in Florida or California playing against some of the best competition in the country, under the supervision of a professional coach, a coach far superior to those parents conducting team workouts. The girl I'm thinking of, however, is well known to the HS coach. She understands that there is no way she can get this kid to play for her if she puts any such restrictions on her. But many HS coaches don't care. They won't allow such a kid to start for them just on principle. And that's wrong. A kid who has been playing high level travel softball should be allowed to continue with her team when she's in high school, especially when that team is doing showcase tournaments. It most likely will not hinder her ability to play for the school team. She is probably better served by staying with her team.
When it gets down to brass tacks, the college coaches will generally understand if the player-prospect communicates that they had to choose between travel or school ball, and they chose travel over school. College coaches know full well that high school coaching is not comparable to travel. Most often, it is the school team which loses out when their coaches put these kinds of restrictions on kids.
As I said at the beginning, I like order. Given the options of uniformity and lack of uniformity, I'll choose uniformity every time. I applaud Little League for adopting the 12 inch ball for 12U girls the same way I applauded their adoption of an age cutoff which is identical to all other fastpitch sanctioning bodies. I think the date on which tournament teams can organize needs some revision or scrutiny but I don't have any easy answers.
The same sort of issue pervades high school ball where team parents can and do provide the opportunity for teams to practice and play out of season. I think more opportunity to play team sports is necessary but I do understand the problems it causes, especially for athletes who would like to play several sports. I do not believe it is fair for HS coaches to restrict kids from playing travel ball. They are coaches not dictators. They don't own a kid just because she plays for them. these kids developed long before the HS coach got hold of them and should continue to do so. It isn't fair or right for a HS coach to try to control a kid out of season. It may actually hurt the kid within the sport.
I don't have easy answers on these issues. But they do need to be examined.Labels: high school, little league, rules
Permanent Link: Rule Uniformity
Rule Issue - Nowhere To Run, Nowhere To Hide
by Dave
Monday, February 05, 2007
I want to discuss with you some rules which are in the process of being updated to reflect a slight change in philosophy. Those rules concern batters and the potential of being called for batter's interference. The rules are changing to give the umpire greater discretion in making the call of interference. The batter's box is "not a sanctuary." The batter does not have a right to this lined space in all cases. Sometimes she must move out of the way by leaving the box. Sometimes leaving it will cause her to be called for interference. It's a grey area but one which all batter's must try to understand.
Generally "interference" is an act by an offensive team which impedes or confuses the defensive team attempting to execute a play. Batter's are not permitted to intentionally hinder the catcher in any way either by stepping out of the batter's box or while remaining in it. A call of batter interference will result in the batter being called out and any advancing runners sent back to the last base they occupied before the interference took place. If the interference occurs on a third strike, the lead runner will also be called out. In some cases, when there are less than two outs, the lead runner will be called out regardless of whether the pitch results in strike three.
I'm not a huge fan of the use of "intentionally" in this context. It requires the umpire to "read the mind" of the batter through whatever means he or she has before calling interference. Too often umpires think first of the age or sophistication of the girls playing and call accordingly. That is far too subjective and requires use of faculties which cannot scientifically be proven to exist.
My first experience with batter's interference came many years ago when my oldest child played for the first time in a league which permitted advancing to homeplate on passed balls and throwbacks to the pitcher. Most often these games consisted entirely of lots of walks, passed balls and wild pitches, and high run scores resulting only from these kinds of plays. Needless to say, those were some pretty painful games to watch. At that level, one of the most important skills for players to learn was to get out of the way when the pitch got away from the catcher. Girls were taught to back quickly out of the box and keep going until they hit the dugout fence to allow their team's runner to score. Some, few, hyper-competitive girls could be seen actually trying to hinder the catcher making a play in order to get the runner from third to score. The inexperienced child-umpires at those games would frequently tell the batters that they had to get out of the way. But I never saw an interference call and I'm not convinced the umpires understood the reason the batter had to move.
More recently, I watched a big high school game which went to international tie-breaker. The runner who began an inning at second tried to get to third on a ball in the dirt which momentarily got away from the catcher. The catcher came up throwing but hit the batter in the helmet. The ball bounded away and out of bounds, into the dugout. No interference was called and the runner, who had reached third, was allowed to score on the ball out of bounds. Ball game over. In the newspaper on the next morning, the girl who had been at bat proudly told the sports reporter that she always remembered to stay in the box and everything will be OK. She found it ironic that her following this simple rule gave her team the "W." Most likely, the umpire ruled that while the batter certainly interfered with the play, she did not do so intentionally. I suppose, having read the newspaper interview, I'd have to disagree with that. She may not have intended to get hit in the helmet but she used some sort of ownership right over the batter's box to get in the way deliberately. As I said a while ago, the batter has no actual right to stay in the batter's box. She can be called for interference even if she remains there assuming the umpire finds that she intentionally interfered by doing so.
Last year I wrote about some observations I made at PONY Nationals. I told you of an instance in which one team from Ohio repeatedly employed what I believe was a deliberate strategy. With a runner on second base, the batter would step out of the box on every pitch and take a practice swing. I say "with a runner on second base" because they didn't always do this when there wasn't one there. But when there was, they did it 100% of the time. The effect of this strategy was to get in the way of the catcher and prevent any chance of throwing a runner out at third on steals. At one point, the catcher tried to make the play anyway and the batter, standing fully out of the box and taking a full "practice" swing, struck the catcher in the arm as she released the ball. The catcher was badly bruised but somehow managed to avoid a fracture of her arm. It could very easily not have worked out that nicely. The umpire made the runner go back to second base but he did not call the batter out. He didn't know the rule he was applying - not an unusual occurrence at Pony Nationals. If he didn't call the ball dead and he's not calling batter's interference, the runner should not be returned to second. There's no rule to return the runner to second without calling interference! Weeks later, this event was described to high level officials at PONY. They indicated disbelief when the issue of intention was raised affirmatively. No basis for the disbelief was explicitly stated but something along the lines of "I find it hard to believe 12 year old girls would do something like that" was the stated reason the umpire was not wrong per se.
I started this piece by telling you that this rule is in the "process of being updated to reflect a slight change in philosophy." The 2007 rule changes for ASA reflect what I believe is a recognition that some batters have been instructed to employ strategies which interfere with the catcher's ability to make plays. They are taught to do so in a manner which cannot be easily determined to be intentional in order to avoid interference calls. ASA has removed "intentionally" and described the change as giving the umpire greater discretion. ASA Rule 7, Section 6Q has been changed to read "when actively hindering the catcher while in the batter's box." Similarly, Rule 8, Section 2F now reads, "when a batter-runner interferes with a thrown ball while out of the batter's box." The comments accompanying these two changes note that both rules have been modified to remove "intentionally" and allow the umpire to use judgment about whether interference occurred. Umpires coming out to the ballpark to call a game no longer need to pack their ESP powers!
To my knowledge, no other organizations have adopted a similar rule change. That's part of the reason I bring it up on the blog - I'd like all governing bodies to at least review the rule, understand the reasoning behind the change, and decide whether they should make this change to their body's rulebook. The NCAA rulebook has more stringent rules than most for batters who interfere with catchers making plays. But it still uses the word "intentionally" which requires the umpire to judge what the batter was thinking.
I believe the proper standard for interference is whether the batter effects the play at all. If you're up to bat and don't hit the ball into play, you have no right getting in anyone's way while the ball is live. Batter's who step out of the batter's box while a play is live - until the ball is returned to the pitcher's circle and the lookback rule engaged - should be called out. To take it a bit further, I believe that batters who step out and take a practice swing while the ball is live should be removed from the game. There's no good reason to do this. And it's coaches' responsibility to teach this skill to their players.
You may think that this standard is too easily met and puts too complex of a burden upon the batter. But this is a complex sport. And too often one person's "intentionally" is another's subjective accident. In order to completely eliminate the possibility of an intentional strategy of interference - a dangerous one, batter's interference needs to be called more frequently. Tough love for this particular item will remove this too often invoked strategy and make it clear to all that the batter is on the field via privilege not right!
Follow-up:
here's a post on a related matter written by one of our softball friends, Ken Krause. It's called, Doing what's right. Ken, in his e-mail to me, notes, "Do coaches teach 12 year olds to interfere on purpose? ... I know of at least one program ... that does." How can Ken make such a bold comment? The coach of the team proudly told him how he teaches the girls to do it!Labels: batter interference, rules
Permanent Link: Rule Issue - Nowhere To Run, Nowhere To Hide
43 Feet!
by Dave
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Those of you who have read this blog before know that in addition to skills, practice sessions, etc., I also like to inject my opinions regarding rule interpretations and changes. This piece is of the rule change opinion variety. Today I would like to talk about pitching distance. Specifically, I believe all high school ball as well as 18U and 16U youth play should be pitched from 43 feet and I'm willing to back up my opinions with some facts and points to ponder. Here goes:
First of all I would like to begin with some math and biological realities. If we examine human reaction time and pitching distance, then factor in the landing point after leg drive and before ball release, and then take a look at various pitching speeds, we have a decent view of just how demanding this game can be on the batter. If we add to this equation the pitcher's distance from contact point of a hit ball as well as the general speed of a well hit ball, we see that the batter is not the only person concerned with reaction time. While doing this, I would like to draw some comparisons to baseball just as a reference point.
Human reaction time is roughly 200-230 milliseconds (.20 - .23 seconds). World class athletes can train themselves to develop faster speeds of around .15 seconds. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that a reasonable reaction time for a fully mature, well trained high school athlete - not a world class one - is around .175 seconds, well below the low point for the average person.
(Before I get into pitch speeds, let me apologize for an error I have been making for about 2 decades. Somewhere along the way I began making the mistake of portraying 60 mph as equivalent to 66 feet per second. Obviously, that's wrong. The proper ration is 1 mph is equal to 1.4667 feet per second. All articles on this blog following this one will be referred to as ADVC (after Dave's velocity correction) and all previous posts are DDIP (during Dave's idiocy period). OK, back to the analysis.)
Let's assume that a high school varsity pitcher hurls around 55-60 mph. Obviously, some throw faster and some throw slower but I need to fix a point so as not to get too complicated. 60 is good, 55 very average to slow. Some reach 65 and even higher but I'll only mention those kinds of power briefly. Let's also assume a 6 foot leg drive. 8 is great but 6 is common. That makes the pitching distance, from release to plate, 34 to 37 feet, depending on whether the plate is at 40 or 43 feet away. At 55 mph from 40 feet, the ball arrives in .42 seconds. At 43 feet, it gets there in .46. If you up the pitch speed to 60, you get .38 seconds and .42, at 40 and 43, respectively. That means the difference in reaction time for the additional 3 feet is about .04 of a second. It is actually a little less than that but I've rounded the numbers for simplicity.
Now .04 of a second doesn't seem like a lot but when you consider a reaction time of .175, that forty milliseconds increases the time the batter has to react by about one fifth. Using my rounded numbers, it works out to about 28%. But if you want use the real numbers, without rounding, your result will be a difference of about 19% - 21%. That's significant. If you had 20% more time to sleep, that would be almost an extra two hours. If you had 20% more time each week, you'd have that extra day and a half you're always wishing you did!
Now let's draw a comparison between baseball and softball just to get a benchmark regarding reaction time. Assuming a high school varsity baseball pitcher throws around 80 - 85 and leg drives out 6 feet, the net pitching distance is 54 feet and the time the ball takes to get to the plate is between .46 seconds and .43 seconds for 80 mph and 85, respectively. That means a 55 mph softball pitcher, average at best, gives the hitter less time to react (.42 seconds) than an 80 mph hour baseball pitcher (.46 seconds). Actually a 55 mph softball pitcher gives the hitter just a little more than an 85 mph baseball pitcher. A 60 mph softball pitcher is right around where a 95 mph baseball pitcher is.
I suggest to you that a 95 mph baseball pitcher is a far rarer commodity than a 60 mph softball windmiller. In baseball's major leagues, there are a select couple of guys (maybe 2 or 3) who can bring it anywhere over 95, once in a while breaking 100 on a legitimate gun. There's a slightly larger handful who gun in around 95. And the vast majority live between 88 and 92 when they reach mid-season form in June. The vast majority of NCAA Division I Women's College World Series pitchers were at or above 60. By comparison, in the men's college championships, there weren't many guys who broke 90. Most threw in the mid-80s.
Of course speed isn't everything in pitching but we are examining reaction time here. And, if an average high school softball pitcher gives the hitter no more time to judge the ball and swing than does an above average college baseball pitcher, there might be something wrong with the structure of the game. That's even before we take into account the natural differences between men and women.
When you move the pitching distance back to 43 feet, the results are telling. A 60 mph softball pitch at 43 feet is somewhere between close to an 88 mph baseball pitch. A 55 mph softball pitch is close to an 81 mph baseball pitch. I believe this is a more appropriate parallel.
Please don't think that I am trying to make girls fastpitch softball more like baseball. I'm not. As a baseball fan, you might call me a purest. I love pitching duels. While I don't disagree that the moves baseball has made in the interests of bringing more offense to the game have made it more exciting, I still remember fondly the days of the 2 hour, 2 - 1 baseball classic game. But as a general rule, softball remains far too dominated by pitching. You've got 9 ladies on the field. Why should one get 80% of the credit or blame for the outcome of the game?
A few years ago we frequented the games of a local NPF team. One day game we went to had just a couple hits and ended 2 - 1 within less than 2 hours from start to finish. That was a pretty good game so we decided we would come back the following night. Even though it was a night game, with just a two hour duration, we figured the kids would get to bed before 10:00 so they'd only be out a little sleep. But something got in the way and we didn't go to the game. That was lucky because it lasted well into the wee morning hours, eventually ending after more than 20 innings, 1 - 0, I believe on an error. That would have been a classic but the following game was similarly low scoring. So was the next one and the next one, and so on. There aren't many high scoring NPF games. The same can be said of college and high school. But at least in college games, there is the chance of an offensive explosion. The 2005 WCWS championship series in which Michigan came back by hitting some home runs was the most exciting softball I have ever seen.
In the many high school games I have watched, one team scoring a single run IS an offensive explosion. I've never seen so much as a 5 - 4 game in high school when the teams are evenly matched. Last year I watched a local high school championship game pitting two pretty good teams against each other. Both had good pitchers, though underclassmen. And both sported some of the best hitters in the county. But the hitters batting averages took a hit as, I believe, there were only two or three hits in the entire game. The thing remained scoreless well into the ITB innings. Finally, one team took the championship when the initial runner at second stole third and the catcher made an error allowing the runner to score. That was an exciting game and I wouldn't change it per se, but that represents much of our experience in watching high school games. There isn't much offense - not nearly as much as comparable levels of baseball.
Pitching duels make both baseball and softball more exciting to me, the purest, but as I said before, a pitching duel should be a classic - somewhat rare. Only the extreme top-level pitchers should be able to accomplish, say, a perfect game, no-hitter, or shutout more than once or twice in a year. As it is, this is a far too common occurrence in fastpitch softball.
The next item I would like to turn to is pitcher safety. There are two schools of thought on this. The first says the pitcher is provided greater safety by being back 3 feet from the batter. The second claims the pitcher is in more danger because the advantage the batter has gained by the move back. They say the batters will hit the ball more sharply which poses a greater danger to the pitcher. I suppose that is true since you don't need to do the math to realize that the batter has gained more reaction time to the 60 mph pitch than the pitcher has gained when you consider the well hit ball is probably around 98 mph. But here's the thing. A 98 mph hit ball takes just .24 seconds to hit the pitcher after pushing off from 40 and landing 34 feet from home while it takes .26 seconds if she pitched from 43. .24 is just too close to the average human reaction time for me. That extra .02 (8%) reaction time is worth having even if it needs to be used more frequently.
Florida high schools experimented with the 43 foot distance during the 2006 season. I'm not sure what their findings pointed to or if they are going to continue using it. But I assume they are since I've heard nothing about them abandoning it. And there are other considerations I have with respect to using the further distance.
When I was a young boy, we played baseball on a diamond on which the distance between bases was 60 feet and from the rubber to the plate was 46 feet. I think it was at 12U when the pitching distance was moved back to 55 and the bases to 75. Then at 13, we played on a regulation diamond - the same size as the professionals used. When I got involved with girls youth softball I was surprised to learn that beginning at age 9, girls use the full base distance - the same as the pros, but pitch from 35 feet. What struck me was that the base distance was full right away. I thought it should be shorter. I didn't think much about the pitching distance being close. Then at 12U, I was surprised that the distance went back to 40 feet and that didn't change until college. I agreed that at 12U, you needed to have the pitcher back to 40 since the batters wouldn't have any chance from 35. But it struck me as odd that pitchers would pitch at this distance for say 6 years until age 18 or 19 when they went to college. Why do high school freshman boys play at pro distance while girls play at a middle one?
In terms of what this difference means to boys and girls, consider that pro baseball scouts evaluate buys playing high school baseball while college softball scouts have to either go only to ASA Gold (where 43 feet is used) or try to make mental adjustments when evaluating all girls not in ASA Gold. I know full well that college scouts do go to ASA Gold and are disinclined to view high school games since their season is in full swing during the HS season. But even the stats from HS are made invalid since it uses the 40 feet distance. And girls who play HS ball have to make the continual adjustment to pitching from 40 feet in the spring to 43 feet the rest of the year. That's a bit unreasonable in my book.
You may be of a mind that the best girls can make this adjustment between distances without that much effort, but why should they have to? I've seen top level pitchers struggle with it. It isn't so much that they can't make the distance or they have to change location to deal with the added time opposing batters have. It is a matter of perfecting pitches. A 60 mph pitch takes a half second to reach home. During that half second, gravity causes the ball's trajectory to fall. At the end of that half second, the ball's trajectory is moving towards the Earth at a speed of 16 mph. The additional .03 of second the pitch takes to arrive when thrown from 43 feet causes the final resting point to drop by 6 inches. That makes a strike at the knees into an obvious ball and a pitch otherwise at the nose into a strike at the letters. Any pitcher who has struggled to get the dropball to graze the bottom of the zone can tell you how difficult it is to move back even a foot and not bounce it in front of the plate.
The same sort of analysis needs to be applied to sideways movement as is applied to downward movement. A screwball on the inside corner becomes a ball when you move back 3 feet and throw it the way you have the past couple of months. Drop curves can bounce outside the catcher's reach. Riseballs go up and out of the zone. Etc., etc. It takes a substantial amount of time for pitchers who already spend a lot of time to acclimate to different distances. Your whole release point for each pitch changes.
It isn't only the pitchers who have to adjust their pitches when the distance jumps from 40 to 43 and then back again. The batters have to adjust as well. A batter sees a pitch as flat to them. That's because our incredibly capable brains adapt to the natural arc of the ball. To see what I mean, get in the cage against a slow pitcher and then a fast one. Check and see the manner in which you missed when you swung. Most often a person adjusting to faster pitching will swing under the pitch. That is because in addition to adjusting to the speed, you have to account for the difference in the arc. Your brain expects the pitch to drop more than it does. This is why using a pitching machine in a confined space is inadvisable. You can adjust the speed the ball is pitched to reflect the shorter distance but that changes the arc - it's different from a pitched ball. We once ran a batting practice for girls who were used to slow pitching. We had a very fast pitcher but the girls couldn't hit her. They came to time it OK but they always swung under the pitch. So we moved the pitcher back a few feet and they hit her fine. Their timing was no better but they judged ball location better.
When it comes to being evaluated by college coaches, girls who play on a field with 43 feet pitching distance regularly and who don't have to continually make adjustments have a decided advantage. That's probably as true for hitters as it is for pitchers. 43 feet provide more time for hitters to react to pitches and this gives the game more offense, making 9 players almost equally responsible for success or failure. Pitchers also get more time to react, however small, and that's worth doing for safety reasons. There's no valid reason to turn an average high school pitcher into the equivalent of an above average high school baseball pitcher. The truly exceptional should and will standout if the pitching distance is moved back to 43 feet. And while moving the distance back won't make school ball play more valid to college coaches who don't have time to come watch, it will make the relative statistical success of high school pitchers more valid when evaluating candidates.
I started this conversation by saying, "I believe all high school ball as well as 18U and 16U youth play should be pitched from 43 feet."   I've addressed high school broadly. So I better at least mention 16U and 18U. First of all, ASA Gold level play already pitches from 43 feet. I'm not sure I get why ASA "A" or "B" should be at a different distance since it presumably has girls who aspire to Gold. PONY changed its championship distance to 43 feet for this year's nationals. But they allow tournament directors of national qualifiers to determine for themselves whether to use 40 or 43. It would be more valid if these qualifiers were pitched from 43. Ideally, all kinds (ASA, NSA, FAST, Little League, etc.) of 18U play ought to be pitched from the same distance. Boys youth baseball at 18U doesn't involve multiple pitching distances. That's because the results of it would be absurd. Girls should be treated similarly.
Boys and girls age at different rates from each other. Girls mature more quickly. And if we make 13 year old boys pitch from 60 feet, 6 inches, why do girls pitch from a closer location than their older cohorts? I won't go as far as to say that 13 year olds ought to pitch from 43 feet but that's only because I want to focus on the older girls first. Just about every girl playing 16U who also plays school ball competes with 18 year olds. For that reason, they shouldn't be excluded from the 43 distance anymore than freshman baseball ought to be thrown from 55.
So, there you have it. Today's diatribe is my advocacy of a uniform 43 feet pitching distance for all fastpitch softball over the age of 14. You can write me to explain why this shouldn't be but there is no need to do so if you'd like to see 14U pitched from the same distance - so would I. If you are a pitcher or pitcher's parents reading this, take one thing away from it. If you truly aspire to one day play Gold level ball, you are going to have to practice your pitching from 43 feet. You shouldn't bounce back and forth since that will mess up your location but you ought to consider deciding a time when you will begin throwing from the longer distance. And give yourself a couple months to make the adjustment. Best of luck to all!Labels: asa, college, high school, pitching, rules
Permanent Link: 43 Feet!
Field Measurements
by Dave
Sunday, October 08, 2006
I had an interesting encounter with an ASA umpire this morning. This fellow was rather arrogant though not a "bad" ump. I've seen plenty better and many of his calls were strange. He required baserunners to slide which is certainly not the rule under ASA or any other sanctioning bodies' rules but be that as it may, I understand where he was coming from and we can live with that rule. Also, many of his hoky calls benefitted us so I won't complain. On balance I'd have to say we got more stupid calls than we lost and none of them affected the outcome of the game. And my interesting encounter occurred before the games even got going.
Right before we started, there was some concern that the pitching plate was short of the 40 feet regulation distance our level plays. We asked around and found somebody who had brought a tape measure. I held the plate end of the tape and was instructed by the umpire to measure from "the front of homeplate." I replied "the front?!?" The ump said confidently, "yes the front. Trust me on that one." I said, "I'll measure it from there for you because you asked but I certainly will not 'trust you on it.' I've read the rules and you are quite wrong." Then I let the issue drop and hours later I'm wondering how the heck the plate was left where it was. There's no way this plate was 40 feet from the front. It is cemented in and I've measured it numerous times. It isn't our home field but we used to play rec ball here. And we're playing a fall ball league where the object is to reinforce our girls love of the game - not to win or take care of our pitchers' egoes. But the measurement couldn't have gone on as planned.
You see, it matters not whether you are playing ASA, NSA, FAST, Pony, or Little League. Actually, it doesn't matter if we're talking about slow or fastpitch softball, baseball or any derivation of these sports. It doesn't matter if you're talking MLB rules or any other organization on the face of the Earth. The measurement of pitching distance is ALWAYS TAKEN FROM THE BACK OF HOMEPLATE. There's actually no question about it.
Another interesting exchange he and I had involved a play at first. A batter beat out an infield hit. After passing first base, she turned in towards the field rather than out towards foul territory. Then she took one step towards second base. Our fielder alertly tagged her out. The arrogant umpire said, "No, no, no. You don't need to turn toward foul territory. She's safe. This isn't baseball. This is softball. You need to turn that way for baseball not softball." There is no question that merely turning toward the field in a softball game does not convert the runner who has safely past first into a runner who must return to base with liability of being put out. That's as true for baseball as it is for softball. But once a runner who has past first makes a full step towards second, she is liable to be put out. The umpire should have called this runner out. And he was wrong about the baseball rules to boot.
So, the lesson I learned today is you really can never trust an umpire with the rules. You really need to have a rulebook with you at all competitions and to the extent you question a rule, you ought to voice your concerns if it has potential to alter the outcome of a game. Those in youth softball often speak of leaving the game to the kids - don't let parents take the game out of the kids' hands. The same is true of umpires. Don't let an umpire slip by using fictitious rules just because he is arrogant. Be prepared to call the bluff of umpires who make rules up based on their own set of myths. The fellow today seemed to have his act together but obviously, he spends very little time actually understanding the rules of the game he officiates. I should have been prepared for that.Labels: pitching, rules
Permanent Link: Field Measurements
|
|
|
