Appeal Play - Sort of

[Sweet Lou]

We had a mildly interetsing play that I'm curious about the ruling we got from the umpire. I have no reason to doubt his rulling but since I've never heard it before I wanted to know if it was correct.

We had runners on 1st & 2nd. Batter hits double to left center.

R1 on 2nd easily scores.
R2 on first stops on 3B (more on that later), goes towards home, changes her mind and heads back to 3rd, 3B coach sends her and she breaks for home sliding in ahead the relay throw apparently safe at home.

B goes from 2nd to 3rd on throw home. C -> 3B (who is on the bag like 1B for some reason) receives throw but batter slides in before tag can be applied safe at 3rd.

Nothing unusal yet. HU now immediately calls R2 (who started on 1st) out for missing 3B. Clearly he was watching R1 score when R2 stopped on 3rd and only saw her dancing and incorrectly assumed she missed the bag. BU did not see, was watching for potential play at 2B on B so since it was judgement we could not appeal to BU to overrule HU that she had in fact touched 3B.

The question we had though was on the actual rulling on R2, assuming our R2 had actully missed 3B. We thought this required an appeal play by defensive team. HU said no, because throw to 3rd reached base BEFORE runner (B) occupied the bag it was an automatic appeal that the defense did not have to ask for.

His explaintion of the rule seemed reasonable but I did want to double check if that was the correct rulling or if this is a case where you should be required to ask for an appeal.

Mind you this is local rec league with volunteer ump so I didn't give him a hard time on it and even though we lost, our poor defensive play and too many BBs by P were the reason we lost, not the call that was made.

 

[MTR]

Don't know what rules set you were using, but this is not true in any of which I am aware.

If an appeal is made, the umpire needs to know what they are appealing and, like in this case, which runner.

Now, if someone was screaming to throw the ball to 3B and the PU was aware of why the catcher threw the ball to 3B, that's fine. However, from the explanation, that doesn't sound like the case here.

 

[Sweet Lou]

Don't know what rules set you were using, but this is not true in any of which I am aware.

If an appeal is made, the umpire needs to know what they are appealing and, like in this case, which runner.

Now, if someone was screaming to throw the ball to 3B and the PU was aware of why the catcher threw the ball to 3B, that's fine. However, from the explanation, that doesn't sound like the case here.

No the defense was just trying to get batter, both teams and fans alike seemed confused by umps ruling on R2 missing 3B.

For the most part we play by standard ASA rules unless he have a published house rule for a specific issue. But mostly those exceptions are around playing time, batting whole order, pitching limits to encorage development of mulitple pitchers and not about specific technical rules since it is rec and our league motto is "Where Every Kid Plays" .

 

[honus14]

Federation (high school) baseball used to have "accidental appeals" - they might still, I haven't done FED baseball in several years. If, for example, with bases loaded, the runner beat the throw but missed home, and the catcher didn't realize it, but just happened to step on home while holding the ball, the umpire was to treat that as an appeal, even if he didn't know he was appealing, or even that he was stepping on the base. But that only worked on a force play, so in your situation it wouldn't apply anyway. Nonetheless, I'm guessing that's what the umpire was (wrongly) thinking of.

 

[Momo'sDad]

MTR - Different case, but I saw an appeal yesterday that surprised me a little.

With 2 outs, the defensive team saw the batter miss 1B on a double (reached 3B on the throw home) to left-center that scored 2 runs. Catcher then threw to 1B for the appeal, but the PU looked at the coach in the dugout and asked whether there was an appeal, to which he responded in the affirmative. Appeal was denied.

It's early in the season, I know, but these were 2 experienced 12u TB teams playing an ASA tournament with 2 ASA umpires. This was an actual tournament, not a friendly, and this is 12u we're talking about. The players did what they were supposed to, but was the umpire wrong to address the coach instead of the player?

 

[MTR]

MTR - Different case, but I saw an appeal yesterday that surprised me a little.

With 2 outs, the defensive team saw the batter miss 1B on a double (reached 3B on the throw home) to left-center that scored 2 runs. Catcher then threw to 1B for the appeal, but the PU looked at the coach in the dugout and asked whether there was an appeal, to which he responded in the affirmative. Appeal was denied.

It's early in the season, I know, but these were 2 experienced 12u TB teams playing an ASA tournament with 2 ASA umpires. This was an actual tournament, not a friendly, and this is 12u we're talking about. The players did what they were supposed to, but was the umpire wrong to address the coach instead of the player?

In ASA, only a fielder in possession of the ball by tagging the player or base, whichever is appropriate to the play, may make a live ball appeal. The only thing a coach may appeal is batting out of order. Maybe the umpire was expecting the coach to instruct the player to say something.

If it were a dead ball appeal, any infielder including the pitcher or catcher may make a verbal appeal.

 

[BretMan]

Federation (high school) baseball used to have "accidental appeals" - they might still, I haven't done FED baseball in several years.

They dumped that rule about 15 years ago.

 

[honus14]

Apparently my definition of "several" goes back further than I thought . . . I still remember when there were no appeals at all.