When the fielders and the players don't understand the IF rule...

To fully appreciate the situation...the field had a foul line and a second out of bounds line. There was seating for the parents behind the out of bounds line, but there was no chain link fence separating the parents from the field.

Runners at 1st and 2nd, pop up to 3B, umpire immediately and loudly calls "IF rule, batter is out."

3B drops the popup. Runner at 2B starts jogging (not running, jogging) toward 3B...because she needs to conserve her energy because it is so far from 2B to 3B. 3B picks up the dropped ball and looks at it like she just found an Infinity Stone from the Avengers. The runner is now next to her. A light bulbs starts to flicker on and off, and so she and the runner are now running side-by-side in a race for the bag.

3B touches the bag before the runner...which of course means nothing since there is no force out. The ump signals safe.

There are now two 14YOA kids surrounded by a millieu of adults screaming either "get back", "tag her", or "what just happened".

The runner, apparently scared by this throng of crazed adults, decides to vacate 3B and return to safer and more tranquil grounds at 2B. She starts jogging (not running) back to 2B. The runner who was at 1B had moved to 2B, probably for a better view of the events.

The former occupant of 1B, now at 2B, is quite confused, because 1B is now occupied by the batter-runner...even though the batter-runner is, of course, out.

About this time, the 3B looks around with that universal 14YOA girl lobotomized look of "huh? were you talking to me?".

I was hoping that the runner would take off and make a game of it, and that 3B would then chase her around the infield and outfield trying to tag her...but, it was not to be.

3B stumbled forward and tagged the runner when the runner was about 1/2 way between the 3B and 2B.

What followed were lengthy lectures on the IF rule...by the coaches and the umpire. A projector and a power point would have been helpful.

You left out the part where all the parents are screaming foul profanities and the umpires.

Despite explaining the rule many times, it still doesn't make sense to so many players.

What doesn't make sense to me is that when it happens and I'm standing there in the 3B coach's box telling them what to do, they instead decide to listen to their equally clueless, screaming teammates and fans who just started paying attention when the ball hit the ground.

Someone invent a device that will temporarily silence everybody not actually standing on the field of play. Some kind of force field that prevents sound from traveling beyond a chain link fence, maybe. Yes, this would violate rules about electronic devices, but I'm willing to cheat just this once so the player 5 feet from me doesn't instead choose to listen to the softball ramblings of a shrieking homeless person 3 blocks away.

I’ve had many discussions with the parents in teams I have coached because of plays just like this. I had to tell them they had to wait till the player was on base, stopped running and time was called before they were allowed to yell. If they didn’t, I asked them to sit in the outfield. It mostly worked and they stopped yelling directions. They started to only yell basic stuff. My favorite though was when I told a player to bunt and the parent was in the stands yelling hit the ball hard.

We had an IF called once with a runner on one (ball not caught). The fielding team threw the ball to 2B where she only touched the bag, did not tag the player. Field umpire called her out, though home plate umpire had called IF fly so there was no forced out there. She had tagged up. Talk about worked up parents. But miracle of miracles, the field umpire actually reversed himself after we'd given up and the girls had all gone back to the dugout. So we got to go back out with the runner on 2B. Talk about mass confusion. But it was nice that he made it right/admitted the mistake. Some of the egos on these guys are unbelievable so it was a lovely surprise.

grcsftbll said:

We had an IF called once with a runner on one (ball not caught). The fielding team threw the ball to 2B where she only touched the bag, did not tag the player. Field umpire called her out, though home plate umpire had called IF fly so there was no forced out there. She had tagged up. Talk about worked up parents. But miracle of miracles, the field umpire actually reversed himself after we'd given up and the girls had all gone back to the dugout. So we got to go back out with the runner on 2B. Talk about mass confusion. But it was nice that he made it right/admitted the mistake. Some of the egos on these guys are unbelievable so it was a lovely surprise.

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How did you have an IF with just a runner on 1B?

There was a runner on 2B also IIRC, but that wasn't relevant to my story so I didn't mention it.

grcsftbll said:

We had an IF called once with a runner on one (ball not caught). The fielding team threw the ball to 2B where she only touched the bag, did not tag the player. Field umpire called her out, though home plate umpire had called IF fly so there was no forced out there. She had tagged up. Talk about worked up parents. But miracle of miracles, the field umpire actually reversed himself after we'd given up and the girls had all gone back to the dugout. So we got to go back out with the runner on 2B. Talk about mass confusion. But it was nice that he made it right/admitted the mistake. Some of the egos on these guys are unbelievable so it was a lovely surprise.

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We had th same thing happen with bases loaded. Ball was dropped after it was called. All of our runners took off, two scored and girl on 1st who went to second wasn’t tagged. But there was confusion and ump calls her out so she walks off. We got it cleared up after forever and she gets back on 2nd. Other team parents proceeded to yell at the TD for the entire next inning. It was amusing.

CoachJD said:

....
Someone invent a device that will temporarily silence everybody not actually standing on the field of play. Some kind of force field that prevents sound from traveling beyond a chain link fence, maybe. .....

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If this device were invented, I am pretty sure a lot of umpires would pay a good price for it.....

We practice where to throw the balls, but on game days they all know to throw it wherever the DLP (designated loudest parent) tell them to