WHATEVER HAPPENED TO PLAYING A BASEBALL GAME UNDR PROTEST? From time to time, back in the day, a baseball game was played under protest because of a dispute about the rules. A team could inform the umpires before the next pitch that they disagreed with an interpretation of the rules and an announcement to that effect was made on the public address system. If the league decided the umpires were wrong about the rules, and “if the violation adversely affected the protesting teamÂ’s chances of winning the game”, the game would be replayed from the point of the protest.
Strange things continue to happen in baseball, and arguments about the rules occur. Rule 4.19 on protesting games is still in effect. Yet managers don’t seem to protest games any more. Here is an example. In the Brewers-Nationals game of July 18, the second base umpire called a runner out because he interfered with the second baseman’s throw to first to try to get the runner there. In that case, as the article points out, both the runner at second and the runner at first should be out. There was no protest (and the protest would have been moot in any event because the team that had a right to protest won the game).
Perhaps there is a new obsession with getting the games over quickly.
I think you told me that once.