- Aug 21, 2008
- 2,386
- 113
Either way, it'd be nice if they would just say it's legal or illegal one way or the other. This crap about it being up to the umpire is silly. As I've said, there are still umpires who believe in calling pitchers illegal for not "presenting the ball". I wish the organizations would make the legality of it clear, and Gorilla Gold would have some kind of seal on the packaging to show it. If they don't wanna make it legal, ok. Then pitchers will go back to the cat and mouse game of trying to hide the need to get something sticky. And usually, umpires won't care unless the other team protests. However, as I stated before, the other team's pitcher(s) are probably doing the same infraction as the opponent so, it's usually best to just remain silent. GG, firm grip, pine tar, spider tact, etc. aside, the ball still has to cross the plate when thrown. Today's hitters get to use composite bats while hitting polycore balls (essentially oversized golfballs), meanwhile pitchers are forced to wear facemasks because of the technology advances the offense has. And I'm sure you all have guessed correctly, yes, I'm biased on this subject. lol. FINALLY they have opened up the pitching rules a bit and the ridiculous 2 feet on the rubber rule has been abolished. That was a great first step to even things out.
Essentially, rock rosin is what it states: rocks. But there is still some powder in there. If you poured that powder out next to the powder from the pitcher's rosin, you'd see the rock rosin is more yellow in color and the powder rosin is white. But, again, I've pitched in 2 trillion games at this point in my life and I've never had an umpire check my rosin bag. Nor has any team I've been on complained about the other team's rosin bag. I stand by what I said before though, if GG is legal then so should rock rosin. So what if it "transfers to the ball"? Once the ball is hit, rolls in the infield dirt, whatever stick was on is now gone. Again, the difference between GG or Rock Rosin vs. something like pine tar is, pine tar will discolor the ball. The other items do not.
The ISC is an organization that is for male fastpitch only. There's no girls or women's divisions. There used to be some boy's divisions but, these days they struggle to fill their men's championship tournament. Trying to put a boy's division together today is becoming more and more difficult. Fewer and fewer kids are playing fastpitch softball. Fewer and fewer are playing sports (ANY sport) in general!. But the ISC was the last organization to use white balls. It's either this year or next that they will use the optic yellow ball for the first time ever. The official ball for ISC is the Worth Kmaster. Worth finally told the ISC they won't be making any more white balls because it's simply not worth their time to make white balls for such a small demographic, men's fastpitch who's numbers are declining more and more annually. Anyway, pine tar was very very obvious on a white ball. I'm sure it's that way on a yellow ball too but, umpires would routinely throw out balls that became too dark. I cannot recall a pitcher ever being penalized for using anything sticky and blackening the ball. they would just throw the ball out of the game and bring in another. Usually umpires will call out one of the pitchers of the team that is batting and ask them to prepare the new ball, meaning they want the shine and slickness to be removed from the brand new ball before it's put into the game. Nobody wants to pitch with a brand new ball straight out of the box.
You entered facts that weren't into evidence TMIB!!! Of course a bat on the approved list that is altered, damaged, or anything would be illegal. No question about it. I was surprised at my first college game when I was on staff that the bats are checked individually. That's not something I have seen done regularly in many places. Either that or I just never paid much attention to it. While I considered myself a decent hitter in my career, the team manager(s) usually felt different about that. So I usually didn't have a bat to be inspected anyway. lol
I said just because your bat's name is listed on a legal bat list doesn't mean your bat is legal. That is a potential issue with declaring a specific product (as opposed to a class of products) legal ... how do I know that is actually what is on your towel? Trust me, I am sure organizations would LOVE to charge companies like Gorilla Gold "a small fee" to slap the org's logo on the package.
