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| Apr-24-12 | | Jim Bartle: PB: I made a claim on the Stumpers page I'm not so sure about, or would at least like to know the rule. I said, after a timeout has been called, time is in again only when the pitcher has the ball on the mound and the home ump gives him the sign to play. In other words, play can't start with the first baseman secretly holding the ball waiting for the runner to take a lead. (Of course they can do this after a play in the field, or a pickoff attempt, if time has not been called.) Also, I believe a pitcher cannot stand on the rubber without the ball. Correct? When I was umpiring kids were constantly trying the hidden ball trick and I almost always disallowed it, saying time was still out. Also, a few years ago in the minors, with a runner on third, the catcher caught a pitch, then fired a potato over the third baseman's head, then tagged the runner out as he came trotting in to score. What's the proper ruling? |
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Apr-24-12
 | | OhioChessFan: There really is no way for the hidden ball play to work legally. If the pitcher stands on the rubber without the ball, that's a balk. |
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| Apr-24-12 | | Jim Bartle: Depends on your definition of hidden-ball trick. Certainly if a guy hits a double and then the second baseman fakes throwing the ball back to the pitcher, the pitcher acts as if he's got the ball but doesn't go to the rubber, the second baseman can tag out the runner if he leaves the base. Or the most popular, when the first baseman just fakes throwing the ball back to the pitcher after a pickoff try. |
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Apr-24-12
 | | WannaBe: http://m.espn.go.com/ncf/story?stor...
Arkansas just love to hire people who turned their back on others... |
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Apr-24-12
 | | Phony Benoni: The first thing to look at is the definition of "Time" from rule 2.00: <"TIME" is the announcement by an umpire of a legal interruption of play, during which the ball is dead.> The resumption of play when the ball is dead is covered in 5.11: <"After the ball is dead, play shall be resumed when the pitcher takes his place on the pitcher's plate with a new ball or the same ball in his possession and the plate umpire calls "Play". The plate umpire shall call "Play" as soon as the pitcher takes his place on his plate with the ball in his possession."> (They call the rubber the "Pitcher's Plate" these days. Guess they got tired of all the double entendres.) Next, it is a balk if (8.05i):
<"The pitcher, without having the ball, stands on or astride the pitcher's plate..."> So, if time has been called and the ball is dead, the hidden ball trick cannot be used. A runner cannot be put out while the ball is dead, play cannot resume without the pitcher standing on the "pitcher's plate", and if he does so without the ball then it's a balk. So when does Time get called? I don't see anything that states it has to be called at the end of a play. As long as Time hasn't been called, the HBT is still on. But it seems routine, if not automatic, to do so. |
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| Apr-25-12 | | Jim Bartle: That's pretty clear. Play only starts with the pitcher with the ball on the mound. |
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Apr-25-12
| | WannaBe: <Phony Benoni> at a baseball game: http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mlb-b... You can take the librarian out of the library, but you can't take the book out of his hands! |
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Apr-25-12
| | Phony Benoni: Actually, I often brought a book with me to games, though I limited my reading to a couple of pages between innings when nothing was happening on the field. Once, my sister and I were sitting in the right field corner at Tiger Stadium, just behind the Visitors' bullpen. It was the middle of the sixth, so I whipped out my trusty paperback copy of J.R.R. Tolkien's <The Two Towers> and was enjoying the antics of Gollum and His Friends when a voice shouted from the bullpen, "Look out!" I glanced up just as a ball which had gotten loose smashed into the front cover of the book and rebounded about ten rows behind me. My sister was disconsolate, and kept wailing, "You coulda hadda ball! You coulda hadda ball!" I showed her the mangled cover of the book. "Look what that would have done to my hands if I had tried to catch it!" Didn't matter. "You coulda hadda ball! You coulda hadda ball!" Sheesh. Sisterly sympathy. |
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| Apr-25-12 | | Jim Bartle: Arthur Ashe sometimes read a book during changeovers. Don't know what sort of books they were. Concerning losing the ball, I won't repeat the story of my mother getting a huge bruise on her leg, courtesy of Leon Wagner during batting practice at Seals Stadium, while my father watched the flight of the ball with binoculars. |
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| Apr-25-12 | | Jim Bartle: Paul Konerko hit his 400th home run. I had no idea he was anywhere close. I'm surprised sometimes that players can reach the majors and not know the rules, though in this case maybe the guy just panicked. An A's runner on first took off while the pitcher (a righthander) was just holding the ball in the stretch. The pitcher just stepped toward first and faked the throw, then threw to second. A clear balk. You'd think major league pitchers would be drilled in the minors (and before) that they have to step off the "pitcher's plate" first, then throw or fake a throw. |
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Apr-25-12
| | WannaBe: Dang, I remember Paul as a Dodgers when he first came up! |
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Apr-25-12
| | WannaBe: Wooooo... Madden curse?? http://sports.yahoo.com/news/lions-... |
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Apr-26-12
| | WannaBe: Did we talk about the Cinc. Red's pitcher, starter, named 'Homer Bailey'?? He is facing Ryan Volosong of the Giants today. |
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| Apr-26-12 | | Jim Bartle: I wonder if Ryan Vogelsang is a distant relative of former Nets guard Otis Birdsong. |
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Apr-26-12
| | WannaBe: Cousin of Lynn Swan and Larry Bird, too. |
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| Apr-26-12 | | Jim Bartle: And Rory Sparrow and Tony Hawk?
"Did we talk about the Cinc. Red's pitcher, starter, named 'Homer Bailey'??" Now all we need is a hitter named "Whiff" or known by his initials D.P. By the way, I saw the Dodgers run into an unusual double play the other day. Ethier hit a single with Kemp either on first or second. After hesitating Kemp gets thrown out at the plate, then Ethier gets thrown out trying to get back to first. How many times do you see a double play on a hit? And in yesterday's game against the A's, the one with Konerko's 400th, in extras Adam Dunn (!) led off with a double, was replaced by a pinch-runner, who was picked off by the catcher after a missed bunt attempt. Must have been a long, slow run back to the dugout. |
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| Apr-26-12 | | Jim Bartle: Say, did Jim Gott ever pitch to Tim Teufel? |
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Apr-26-12
| | Phony Benoni: Of course he did! Here's their first encounter:
http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/... That was beginner's luck. As this chart shows, those two hits were the only ones Teufel got against Gott. http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/... |
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| Apr-26-12 | | Jim Bartle: Teufel homered off Gott in his first at-bat. The evangelical community must have gotten nervous. |
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| Apr-26-12 | | King Death: The authore tries to make a case for Mel Stottlemyre in the Hall Of Fame, is anybody here buying it? http://sports.yahoo.com/news/five-f... Here are his career stats: http://sports.yahoo.com/news/five-f... |
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| Apr-26-12 | | Jim Bartle: Stottlemyre was a good pitcher, better than I remember. But if he's a Hall of Famer, another hundred pitchers need to go in with him. |
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Apr-26-12
| | WannaBe: <JB> Just the ones who understand German, the others didn't have a clue. =) |
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Apr-26-12
| | OhioChessFan: When one of your most convincing arguments for a pitcher is "He was an innings eater", you've got a weak case. Not bad stats, but 0.8% votes for the HOF sounds about right based on his career. http://www.baseball-reference.com/p... |
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| Apr-26-12 | | Jim Bartle: "When one of your most convincing arguments for a pitcher is "He was an innings eater", you've got a weak case." I noticed that, too. "Aside from winning 25 games a year and having an ERA of 2.10, Koufax was a real innings-eater." |
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Apr-26-12
| | Phony Benoni: If "innings-eater" was an important criterion, Mickey Lolich and Wilbur Wood would have been in the Hall years ago. But what's really comical is that in Stottlemyre's time, good starting pitchers were expected to be innings-eaters; it wasn't an HOF credential. |
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