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| Dan Y.
June 20, 2010
11:02:15 PM
Entry #: 3508810
| This is actually a good point to bring up.
There is a distinct difference between an appeal and asking an umpire to get help.
An appeal is an act by the defense of tagging the runner or base in question, with possession of the ball, when a runner may have failed to touch a base or failed to touch up on a base as or after a fly ball has been touched and eventually caught.
All too often, and especially in youth baseball, people use the phrase 'appeal' incorrectly. When you feel that an umpire has missed a call or misinterpreted a rule, you may ask the umpire who made the call to ask for help.
You should never go directly to another umpire and say something such as, "Can you help him with that?" or "Can I appeal that to you?". You're doing it all wrong. Go to the official that made the call and ask him to get help.
This is most commonly seen on a check swing. It's not an appeal, it's one official asking another official for help. If you notice, the base official is never going to give a signal, no matter how long the catcher or pitcher point at him, until the plate umpire asks for his opinion.
As an aside, it must be the MANAGER that comes out to speak to the officials. Assistant coaches have no standing to speak with officials about calls. They should be ejected quickly if they persist to argue calls.
So, the manager comes out and speaks to an official about a call or ruling. That official has the option, but is never forced, to confer with the other official(s) about that call/ruling. The other umpires will then tell him what they saw and then it is still the original umpire's decision to change a call or not. At no time may one official overrule another. Whoever made the original call owns that call the entire time and only he is the one that will change that call. Other officials are only going to provide their opinions.
If I bang a guy out at home, and my partner in the field can clearly see that the ball came loose from the catcher, then that official is now able to provide additional information unknown to me making the call. This would be a reason for umpires to get together and for the original official to change his call.
If, in the same scenario, the catcher doesn't lose the ball, but the team just doesn't like the call, it isn't advisable for officials to even discuss the call with one another. Even if the call may have been wrong, allowing teams to essentially shop a call around until they get something they like isn't going to happen.
To the original question about what is right I would say it has (or should have) nothing to do with stubbornness but rather following correct procedure and understanding that judgment calls will be imperfect. Certain calls belong to one official and other calls belong to another official. There are not calls made by committee and unless additional information is seen by an official not making the call, the plain truth is that the game is moving on with the call made by the official that made it.
Dan Y.
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