appealing a judgement call

[Iluvblue]

Well I thought you could not appeal a judgement call, but apparently that is incorrect.

Im watching St. Francis play Vacaville Saturday. Vacaville is down 1 in the bottom of the 7th inning with no outs and a runner on 1st. Batter grounds to pitcher who fires to 2nd and then on to 1st base. The guy in the field calls both kids out.... pretty clear he blew the call at 1st base, but he called them out.

Vacaville coach is not happy and proceeds to start talking to the home plate blue. Im not sure if she asked for help or what, but the guy in the field has a talk with home plate and they revers his call and call the runner safe. She didnt even come close to pulling her foot at 1st, so no way they reversed the call based upon that... so the guy i the fields call (judgement) was changed in favor of the guy at the plate.

St. Francis went from nobody on and 2 out to a runner on 1st with one out and they ended up losing.

Now the guy behind the plate is "The Man" so i can see how he changed his partners call, and they did get it correct (IMO) but how can this even happen? Assuming they didnt reverse the call saying the kid at 1st pulled her foot, isnt this getting an appeal on a judgement call?

[HugoTafurst]

Well I thought you could not appeal a judgement call, but apparently that is incorrect.

Im watching St. Francis play Vacaville Saturday. Vacaville is down 1 in the bottom of the 7th inning with no outs and a runner on 1st. Batter grounds to pitcher who fires to 2nd and then on to 1st base. The guy in the field calls both kids out.... pretty clear he blew the call at 1st base, but he called them out.

Vacaville coach is not happy and proceeds to start talking to the home plate blue. Im not sure if she asked for help or what, but the guy in the field has a talk with home plate and they revers his call and call the runner safe. She didnt even come close to pulling her foot at 1st, so no way they reversed the call based upon that... so the guy i the fields call (judgement) was changed in favor of the guy at the plate.

St. Francis went from nobody on and 2 out to a runner on 1st with one out and they ended up losing.

Now the guy behind the plate is "The Man" so i can see how he changed his partners call, and they did get it correct (IMO) but how can this even happen? Assuming they didnt reverse the call saying the kid at 1st pulled her foot, isnt this getting an appeal on a judgement call?

Sh*t happens.
FYI, there is nothing that says that what happened can not be done.
Sure it shouldn't be done, but nothing says it can't be done.

This is not an "appeal" in terms of softball definitions of "appeal" where there are strict rules as to how to make the appeal (that would be for things like a missed base, leaving a base too soon on a caught fly ball, batting out of order, etc.)

I think you are mixing up the rule regarding what can be "protested".

Although we don't know what really transpired on the field, it sounds like the coach did go to the PU and asked about the call.
Normal prcedure would have the PU directing the coach to the BU (who made the call).
BU could then say,
"I have an out, there is nothing to discuss" or
"Gee, I had her out, but my angle was kind of bad.... let me see if my partner had a better view" (and then if his partner saw something different he can change the call) or
"Hey Coach, I think I blew the call, I know she was safe but for some reason I called out. Don't worry, I'm going to fix it" or
a bunch of other things.


Do you ever make a post that doesn't involve umpire mistakes?

[GIMNEPIWO]

Field Blue : What do you have? I think I rushed my call and may have blown it ...
Plate Blue : Yeah, I think so
Field Blue : You wanna grab a burger and a few cold ones after the game?
Plate Blue : Sounds good ... you buying ?
Field Blue : The first two rounds at least
Plate Blue : Okay, we agree, safe?
Field Blue : Yep

[ajaywill]

Well I thought you could not appeal a judgement call, but apparently that is incorrect.

Im watching St. Francis play Vacaville Saturday. Vacaville is down 1 in the bottom of the 7th inning with no outs and a runner on 1st. Batter grounds to pitcher who fires to 2nd and then on to 1st base. The guy in the field calls both kids out.... pretty clear he blew the call at 1st base, but he called them out.

Vacaville coach is not happy and proceeds to start talking to the home plate blue. Im not sure if she asked for help or what, but the guy in the field has a talk with home plate and they revers his call and call the runner safe. She didnt even come close to pulling her foot at 1st, so no way they reversed the call based upon that... so the guy i the fields call (judgement) was changed in favor of the guy at the plate.

St. Francis went from nobody on and 2 out to a runner on 1st with one out and they ended up losing.

Now the guy behind the plate is "The Man" so i can see how he changed his partners call, and they did get it correct (IMO) but how can this even happen? Assuming they didnt reverse the call saying the kid at 1st pulled her foot, isnt this getting an appeal on a judgement call?

You make an awful lot of leaps here considering that you had no idea what any of the conversations on the field were about.

I will grant that it was entirely possible that the umpires on the field totally screwed this up and the PU did tell the BU his call was wrong and to change it...I've seen some weird stuff happen over the years. It is also possible that the coach saw something that either umpire did not, like a bobbled ball, obstruction, etc, etc,...and when brought to the umpires attention, caused them to reverse the call.

The point is that we can't comment since we don't know the nature of any of the conversations and we (umpires) are usually slow to bash our brethren unless we have a pretty good reason!

[tcannizzo]

From the OP, sounds like nobody asked BU to go for help, appeal, protest or otherwise.
Any umpire who questions his/her own call and then goes for help on their own is well within their rights and even their responsibilities.

Had a sitch in 18A NQ a couple of weeks ago.
I am PU. Bases loaded with 1 out.
Batter hits a low line-drive to F6.
The way I initially saw it, was a shoe-string, snow-cone catch.
I called "CATCH".
F6 throws to F4 on live ball appeal at 2B- BU signals out.

However, I saw a lot of yellow and very close to the ground.
So, I went to my partner and asked if he happened to see the ball touch the ground.
He was reluctant to answer, but I insisted.
He said had an angle on it and the ball did touch the ground.

Based on that, I reversed my own call and declared that there was no catch
BR gets 1B.
R2 that was on 2B that they made the live ball appeal was awarded 3B.
R3 that was on 1B was declared out on the force.
R1 that was on 3B was allowed to score.

So, instead of an inning-ending double play, we now have runners on 1st and 3rd with 2 outs and a run scored.

D-Coach questioned whether I could do this, because my call put his team in jeopardy.
My answer was Yes and that in fact, both teams were equally put in jeopardy.
No argument, play on.