Apply the wrong rule

n my career I have observed countless umpires, including myself, ruin games just because we couldn’t figure out which rule to apply. That generally happens because we have to officiate at more than one level. My two flagrant rules blunders convinced me of the importance of learning every statute in every book. I vowed never to be embarrassed like that again. By dint of study and concentration, I never was.

All baseball laws begin with homage to the rules published on September 23, 1845, by the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club. Umpires are still fond of Rule 11: "Three balls being struck at and missed and the last one caught, is a hand out; if not caught is considered fair, and the striker bound to run." That’s true 158 years later. Only chess has similarly enduring rules.

But unless we’re professional umpires we call OBR (Official Baseball Rules) only during the summer. During the spring we’re busy with FED (National Federation of High Schools) and NCAA (college) rules. Thereby hangs a play.

Play 1: R3. The pitcher assumes the set position. He holds the ball in his pitching hand and that hand is at his chest, while his glove hand is at his side. As he stretches, the umpire calls "That’s a balk!" and scores R3. Ruling: That’s correct: The pitching hand must be at the side — but only in FED play then.

Unfortunately for my afternoon, it was an NCAA game, my first college game behind the plate in more than 10 years. Recently, I had called some FED games, so naturally I thought....

Poor excuse. I should know the rules. But as the oboe is an "ill wind that nobody blows good," — Danny Kaye — that blunder led me to create a little 40-page duplicated booklet called "The Rules of Baseball — A Comparison." That’s now titled Baseball Rule Differences or the "BRD."

Misapply a known rule

That mistake is caused by nervousness, pressure induced by a ranting coach. It also leads me to discuss briefly the first of the great lies told to umpires: "You know, I don’t score high on tests in the classroom, but I can do it on the field. They word the test questions just to trick you up."

Smart on the field, dumb on the test? Bull! If you can’t figure out a ruling in the quiet of the study, how can you expect to do it with a coach breathing down your shirt? Here’s one of the grand blunders I saw an umpire pull. He did it three times in one season at three different levels. Talk about consistency! Using him as my model for the bad umpire, I dubbed him "Old Smitty." Many others now use that name as well.

Play 2: R1, R3, 1 out. R3 holds and R1 goes halfway on B1's fly ball to right. The right fielder catches the ball, R3 retouches properly and scores, but R1 slips on the base path. The throw beats him back to first for the third out. Ruling: Smitty said, "That’s a force out, and the run is canceled." But not at any level of baseball I know. There’s never a force unless the batted fair ball hits the ground; the batter must become a batter-runner.

You think that’s bad? As Al Jolson said, "You ain’t heard nothing yet."

Play 3: "Ball four!" says the umpire. The batter turns toward the on-deck circle and tosses his bat gently to the next batter. Ruling: The UIC rips off his mask and bounds toward the first-base dugout. "Coach, he’s ejected! Get me a pinch runner. He threw his bat deliberately."

It was 1976, and the brand new FED rule did say that a player who intentionally tosses his bat or helmet is to be ejected. But that umpire didn’t read the whole sentence, which was: "The batter cannot deliberately throw his bat to register disgust." Fortunately, I hustled down to the plate in time to correct the rookie umpire. Thank goodness, it was a scrimmage game, and everybody was getting a good laugh out of it, everybody, that is, except my partner.

Call a rule nobody knows

Arrogance is a necessary personality trait — in its place. Just ask any President. But when an umpire is arrogantly wrong, there’s heck to pay. If an umpire feels the need to enforce a rule that he’s quite sure nobody else knows, he’s not arrogant, though: He’s just stupid. I saw another Smitty do that in a 1985 NCAA game. The rule he summoned up was also new that year. As far as I know, that is the only time it was ever applied when I was on the field.

Play 4: The coach comes out and signals for the new pitcher, warming up in the bull pen. I trot out to short right field and motion. The pitcher tosses a couple of more and then heads to the mound. The plate umpire meets him there and informs him he has lost two of his warm-up pitches. Ruling: The UIC was right: "The relief pitcher, when called from the bullpen by the umpire, must proceed immediately to the mound. Any additional pitches thrown in the bullpen will be subtracted from the eight preparatory pitches permitted on the mound." (NCAA 9-2h)

But that rule was not only new, it was one designed just to say: "Gotcha!" When a team deliberately delayed bringing the reliever to the mound, the Committee wanted to give the umpire specific power to penalize that delay. It’s like the prohibition against running the bases in reverse order. Nobody ever enforces that rule since nobody ever runs the bases in reverse order.

Why don’t runners go in reverse order? Simple: Because there is a rule against it. Why don’t teams willfully delay when bringing in their relievers? Because there is a rule against it.

Disregard a rule you don't like

I have two pet peeves. This blunder is one of them.

Don’t misunderstand me. I have no objection to ignoring a rule — for a good reason. You’ll find that out at Blunder #7. But I’m thoroughly against ignoring a rule simply because you don’t think it’s "real" baseball (OBR).

Play 5: R1. The right-handed pitcher in the set position leans forward with both hands on his knees. Slowly he turns his shoulders to check the runner at first. He turns back, straightens up, stretches, comes to a complete stop, and fires the ball at 85 mph past a startled batter. Ruling: Nothing that happened there was wrong, if the game was played at the NCAA or OBR levels. But it was a FED game — and the FED decrees that is a balk.

That balk ruling is no johnny-come-lately. Brad Rumble, the rules’ interpreter, officially ruled in 1988 that it was a balk. In 1990 FED added a case book play, 6.1.1g. In 1992 it became a point of emphasis, and in 1993 it showed up at 6-1-1, where it is today. In FED if F1 turns his shoulders on the rubber, it’s a balk!

The FED has tried to get umpires to call it right for fifteen years. As late as 1998 the statute was a point of emphasis. But FED umpires still disregard the rule in some parts of the country. Why? "Heck, Carl," they say, "that ain’t real baseball."

FED umpires aren’t the only ones who ignore rules.

Play 6: The count is 0-1 when the pitch just nips the outside corner. "Strike two!" yells the ump. The batter, in disbelief, steps out of the box to glare at the umpire. He settles back in and laces the next pitch to right field for a single. Ruling: It was an NCAA game in 1994, and the proper procedure would have been for the umpire to call a penalty strike three and send that batter packing. Far too many college umpires said, "Shucks!" — or some similar word. "That’s not real baseball. I don’t like that rule." So they didn’t call the "batter’s-box rule," which mandates a penalty strike when the batter leaves the box illegally.

NCAA umpires didn’t call it so often that the committee passed around a little "note" (never actually written down) that umpires should use "good judgment" when enforcing that rule. Today, as Shakespeare would say, it is a rule more honored in its breach than its observance. Sadly, it’s now only a "Gotcha!"

It’s obvious, isn’t it? You may very well ruin one of your games if you don’t call a rule simply because you don’t like it, but one of the coaches does. On the other hand, worse than indulging your prejudice is giving in to a coach who hates a rule you like and who comes slithering up to say, "We’ve agreed today we won’t enforce the ‘shoulder-turn balk rule.’"

As Warren Willson from Australia writes, "We are the stewards of baseball. Our ‘customers’ aren’t schools, or coaches, or conferences. Our customer is the game itself." Don’t mess it up because you don’t like what one book has done.

Carl Childress is the Editor-in-Chief of Officiating.com. He's been writing professionally about amateur "hardball" umpiring for thirty years. RightSports, Inc., publishes each year his unique Baseball Rule Differences, known as the BRD. He's also the Umpire-in-Chief for the American Legion in his area as well as being the TASO secretary and rules interpreter. Click here to read a short biography. You may reach Carl at carlchildress@officiating.com.