Officials’ Corner: Something happens in baseball and softball games that always makes me shake my head a little.

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June 12 – Officials’ Corner: Something happens in baseball and softball games that always makes me shake my head a little.

A weird rule situation comes up, the umpire says, “Let’s look it up,” and immediately somebody in the stands or dugout says: 

“Well I guess the umpire doesn’t know the rules.

”Honestly, most of the time it means the opposite.

The rules we usually double-check are the rare ones that might only happen once or twice in an entire season. They’re not the routine safe/out calls or ball/strike situations we see every night. They’re the oddball situations that everyone thinks they understand until they actually have to explain the rule. 

Here’s a perfect example. 

A batter comes to the plate wearing the wrong jersey number, but the player’s NAME is correct in the scorebook.

I can already hear it from the bleachers: 

“That’s an out!” 

“She’s batting illegally!”

“You gotta call her out, Blue!”

But that’s not the rule. 

The correct ruling is a warning to the head coach and the batter stays in the game. No out is charged. If it happens again later with another player wearing the wrong number, it’s still not an out. The head coach is then restricted to the dugout for a second offense. 

That surprises many people because somewhere along the way, fans started believing every lineup issue automatically means an out or an ejection. Many rules just don’t work that way. 

As umpires, we work hard to know the rules, but there are hundreds of situations across baseball and softball rule books. Others might come up once every few years. 

So if you ever see an umpire stop to confirm a rare rule situation, don’t mistake that for weakness or uncertainty. Others might appear once every few years. “So if you ever see an umpire stop and confirm a rare rule situation, don’t mistake that for weakness or uncertainty. Most of us would rather take an extra minute and get the ruling correct than guess and get it wrong. 

Because in this job, being willing to learn and verify is much more important than pretending to know everything.