Intentional Walks

You are absolutely right. It is better to know before you start. And we did know the rule - rangeroo asked the question for his(her?) team b/c it happened in their game. Their coach had the rule book - they were looking for clarification on this site because the coach thought he knew the rule and because umpires across the state played this particular situation differently, and it has been interpreted differently by different umpires. Again, we practice this situation with our pitchers. And why not bring the issue to a message board which has members who are obviously coaches and umpires - it seems the most logical place to ask a question in an open forum and get feedback - we aren't trying to change any rules via a message board. Umpires read this stuff and can chime in to help with clarification.

 

Tennessee Intentional Walk

Not to get off subject , I was watching 16U games in Morristown, TN., and I think they wanted to put these batters on base,,,,using less than 4 balls and no risk of batter hitting a pitch-out that missed ?

Fhotos taken 5/21/06

 

Thanks eyesup!

Thanks eyesup,for your clarification

You're absolutely correct in your answer. Since our game with you I've asked 20 or so "knowledgeable" people in my travels to different games etc. and gotten many different answers. I can tell everyone for certain,ALL SEASON LONG,in our conference if a team wanted to intentionally walk a batter,they simply notified the ump and the batter was given a free pass with NO pitches being thrown. My own DD was IW'd 7 times this year without a pitch being thrown. there were multiple other teams' coaches at our game against you guys when that situation arose who ALL thought the umpire HAD to be wrong because of the way IW's were handled all season in our conference. Thanks again eyesup and all of you who responded to this post. For anyone who isn't sure... To intentionally walk a batter you MUST pitch four non strikes to that batter!

 

Like I mentioned before, I would have been upset too if you were allowed to play it that way all year. We actually had two situations come up in our game last night where we needed to walk the middle of Butler's lineup with two outs if we fell behind in the count. Not to take anything from Butler, they are good and some of them really can hit, but our pitcher is very good at hitting her corners and spots and she fell behind on each of the hitters' 2-0 which hurt. The ump was tough on her, did not give her anything inside at all. Anyway, it backfired on us, they got that triple in the 3rd with bases loaded and 2 outs...uggghhh. I felt so bad for our pitcher, she did everything she was asked. The only thing keeping me from feeling completely cruddy about that hit is it would not have mattered if the game was 1-0, 5-0 or 10-0, you have to score runs to win, and we have not done that against Butler, they get the timely hits, we did not when we played each other this year. Anyway, our P was told to IW the number 5 batter if she fell behind and she did it just fine. Hopefully next season this will be a non-issue for you guys. Good luck and hope your DD tears it up at LRC! Great program and coach there!

 

All of the discussion about the Intentional Walk without pitches brings me back to my biggest problem with some of the umpires we have. Who decided the girls games needed to be played in 45 minutes? Every rule they seem to add is some type of speed-up rule. We played two 7 inning games that were barely over one hour. Why the need to speed things up by 1) not making Intentional walks be thrown 2) one minute warm-up between innings 3) no quick conferences with your players as they come off the field 4) no warm up balls between innings. All of these rules have been enforced in games we played the last two years. Most fastpitch pitchers I've seen throw three pitches in the time one gets thrown in a baseball game. The batter goes through his Nomar impression and the pitcher checks the batter and then the runner before the pitch. This is not a criticism of baseball but more a statement of the fact that some softball umpires are in too much of a hurry. This is especially true early in the year when games are played at 4:00.

 

great point.

 

hurry because blue gets paid by the game.