151 Ways to Ruin a Baseball Game

Carl childress had two best-selling books about baseball umpire blunders: 51 Ways to Ruin a Baseball Game and 50 More Ways .... Now, he's combined those books and added 50 more blunders. Here's Blunder #12: Misapply a rarely encountered rule: illegal bat. My records show that during my career spanning seven decades, I found no illegal bats in the €50s, €60s, or €70s. In 1982, I removed a bat from the game because it was a wooden bat with a grip made of slippery electrical tape. The defining year for €œillegal bats€ in FED play was 1993 though the FED announced the change in €92. Now, a metal bat could not weigh €œmore than five ounces less€ than its length. The message boards went nuts: €œIt€s a meaningless phrase€ was the general conclusion. FED had anticipated the outcry and offered a simple example: A 35-inch bat could not weigh less than 30 ounces. If you were umpiring in those days, you became familiar with -5 metal bats. Illegal bats were all the rage, and umpires were applying 1-3-5 Note and 7-4a with due diligence: A batter entering the box or hitting with an illegal bat is out. The problem was the Note: €œBats that are broken, cracked, altered, dented, that deface the ball, or that do not meet the rule specifications are illegal.€ Result? Illegal bats create outs. It took the FED nine years (until 2001) to fix it: €œBats that are broken, cracked, or dented shall be removed without penalty.€ That was also the year when the €œmore-than-less-than€ rule changed from -5 to -3. The FED, joined by the NCAA, was now seriously intending to bring the action of a metal bat closer to that of the traditional wood model. In 2002, we first heard about BESR (bat exit speed ratio). Bat manufacturers were given one year to demonstrate their compliance. OK. They could do that. The problem was: The rule created a stir in school athletic budgets. Since baseball is a non-revenue sport, some poor schools simply provided only one or two bats, which led to a student€s parents putting up the money for their son€s personal bat. BESR it was €“ until this year, 2012, when BBCOR (batted ball coefficient of restitution) arrived. We didn€t know what it meant €“ exactly €“ but we knew what it did. Doubles in the gap became short singles, and nearly all home runs were reduced to the occasional, wind-blown fly. Amateur players were simply not strong enough or skilled enough to use a wooden bat, which is what the new metal models closely resembled. In my area, game-scores changed from 8-5 to 3-1. We also lost about 20 minutes on average game-times: Fewer hits mean fewer runners. The point of this history is that amateur umpires don€t often (never?) run into altered bats. All our illegal bats deal with numbers and science. In FED and NCAA, umpires no longer inspect bats. In FED, the coach must certify his equipment is legal. If he does and it ain€t, dire things happen. Check out FED 4-1-3b and Penalty. Here is a sample play: Play 14: FED only. Mercedes visits Roma. R1, R2, 1 out. B1 from Roma homers, 3 runs score. The next batter, B2, steps into the box, holding the same bat B1 used. The defense appeals the bat is illegal. The umpire agrees: It€s not defective (bat removed, action legal). It€s illegal: no BBCOR sticker, for example. PL€s life will never be the same again. B1 is out: He used an illegal bat. The runners would return to the bases occupied at the time of the pitch because B1 was appealed before the next pitch. Except .... Except, now B2 is also called out: He attempted to use an illegal bat. Result: 3 outs €" and no runs score. There€s an ominous kicker. At the pregame meeting the head coach verified that all his equipment was legal. It wasn€t, so the umpire restricts him to the dugout for the rest of the game. Let€s hope PL has a cell phone because he€s going to need help getting out of Roma after that game is over.