for anyone who's familiar with baseball rules....

[gravedigger]

is there a rule that differentiates between when a game will be 'suspended' or restarted?
Motivation for my question:

My kid plays in a "Cal Ripken" league that uses the MLB baseball rulebook with a few exceptions that 10 and under adopt. (like no leading off, and dropped 3rd strike does NOT allow batter to advance)

One team is winning after 2 complete innings by a score of 14 to 0. The games have a 1 hr 45 min time limit and this game was 1 hr and 19 minutes in.

Due to weather that was impending, (but not there yet), the commissioner looking out for the safety of everyone decided that the game needed to be stopped.

But he cancelled the game. Not suspended. Cancelled. Effectively giving the team with the deficit the advantage on the restart when the game is ,,made up.

I dont give one rats *** what the rules say. My question is the motivation of why a rule would be in place to determine when a game that has already started is restarted or resumed.

Why would a game, if going to be made up, would not resume from where it left off? What advantage does the team who had earned the lead on the field of play, get?

Yes I'm biased. Yes my kid was playing the game of his life. But yes, if he'd been losing, it would have still made more sense to suspend the game rather than restart in my opinion to prevent the obvious punishment to the team leading.

If the game is permanently cancelled then so be it. Not talking bout that. THis is restart vs continuation.

Someone give me a rational reason it shouldnt be continued rather than restarted.

 

[Todd4State]

I think it depends on how many innings have been played and both teams schedules more than anything. They try to play 162 as much as they possibly can. This is one thing about baseball I have trouble remembering- how many innings you have to play for the game to be official- I believe it is five and a half for it to be an official game in MLB. If it's an official game based on innings played, they'll just go ahead and count it and whoever is ahead wins. Sucks for the losing team. If it's stopped in say the third inning, they'll schedule a double header or a make up game on an off day as the schedule allows. If they can't do that, they'll just cancel it. If that one game is the potential difference in a pennant race, they'll replay the game at the very end of the year.

The Pine Tar game was one game where an inning was replayed, and that was by order of the commissioner of baseball.

Since this is youth baseball we're talking about, and since there is a time limit, I would think that MLB rules wouldn't apply here as far as awarding wins because of delays. And while I'm sorry that your kids team got screwed, ultimately it's up to whoever runs the league. I don't think there's anything in the MLB rulebook that you could use to overturn the ruling. You can ask the guy running the league about this, but I suspect that they do have some kind of criteria of what constitutes an official game. And since this particular game was only in the second inning, the official game criteria probably calls for more innings to be played than that, and that's what the guy running the league went with.


Regardless, while you did get screwed, I doubt it was intentional.

 

[missouridawg]

Linkronicity

Basically what the rule states is that if a game hasn't gone long enough to be considered a regulation game (5 complete innings, or 4.5 innings if home team is winning) and weather "suspends" it... then the game is replayed from the first inning. I think the only way to have a game that is "suspended" is to have a tie score past the 5th inning and you still need to settle a winner or have a regulation game (one that goes 5 innings) and the away team is at-bat, meaning the home team didn't have its fair share of at-bats. If you're past the 5th, the home team is winning,and weather ends the game, it goes into the books. I remember Albert Pujols having 2 HRs against the Cubs before the 5th inning and the game being replayed the next day due to weather back in like 2003.

As far as the Cal Ripken league rules, I think in a 6 inning style league, the 5 inning rule that the MLB uses turns into a 3 inning rule. So if the game is only in the 2nd inning, then you've got to restart the game.

I'd copy and paste the text from the website, but the formatting it copied to here was awful. It's section 4.12 (with reference back to 4.10).

 

[missouridawg]

Your son's team got royally screwed, because the weather wasn't there yet. Yes, it was probably in the best interests of the kids and probably not a terrible decisions... but that game should probably be played until the weather arrived (or some type of weather warning was given - not sure what was the case on your game).