No, you can eat it way after that. (NYUCK NYUCK)
In addition to the first/third coaches being outside their boxes I don’t even remember the last time I saw someone called out for running outside the baselines. Guys gunning around third seem to do this ALL the time.
I’m confused by this. If I’m standing 10 yards away, why would the ref move me back two yards? I’m standing at the correct minimum distance.
I’ve watched a lot of “soccer”, and played quite a bit, but I’ve never seen a referee move players to a position that’s more than 10 yards away from the ball at a free kick.
He’s penalizing you for being a jerk in the previous penalty kicks. It’s not according to the rules, but there’s not much you can do about it.
Actually, some portions of the rule have been changed. If there’s a non-force play at home, and the runner misses the plate, the umpire will call the batter safe if he’s not tagged. If the catcher appeals and tags the batter, he’s out.
It used to be that the umpire would make no call in the situation. That was a dead giveaway that the batter hadn’t touched the plate. In order not to give that clue to the defense, the umpire does call the play. You’ll often see on close plays the catcher touching the ball to the runner even if he’s been called safe, just in case.
There ought to be: any ref that enforces rules that don’t exist isn’t properly refereeing and should be fired. The job of a ref is to enforce the rules, not to decide that he is above them.
The fact that this is not done in soccer is another reason to hate it. The ref can clearly make up his own rules because he got angry. It is impossible to have fair play if the ref can let his emotions determine who gets an unfair advantage. Imagine it in real life: A police officer says, “Yeah, you flipped me off, so I busted you for speeding even though my radar clearly said you weren’t. Even though the judge has a recording from the gun showing you weren’t speeding, he will still let your ticket stand. Piss me off, and I will punish you.”
Imagine if the team you liked lost because the ref said that your favorite player pissed him off, and thus scooted him back, and the ball landed right where he would have been, and he was unable to steal the ball and kick for a goal. Are you really going to tell me that you would think it fair that the ref just fixed the game?
This has nothing to do with soccer. Piss off any ref enough and he can make calls go against you if he wants. Piss off the ump behind the plate and you might find the strike zone expanding or contracting. Piss of a football ref and you may find you get a few extra holding calls.
It’s just human nature and general sportsmanship. You don’t go out of your way to piss off the people who make the calls. Good refs let you know when you’re stepping over the line and gently correct you with the tools they have at hand. There are bad apples in every sport, both officials and players. To think this is a sport-specific issue is silly.
It’s only illegal to run outside the line to avoid a tag.
As for the coaches, the MLB rules recognize practice has differed from the rules:
Ah, I must have explained it poorly. He wouldn’t move you if you were at 10 yards.
On a ‘normal’ free kick, the wall will line up around 8-12 yards away from the spot. 8 yards away or so is close enough to correct for the Ref to generally let it slide, unless the offense specifically asks him to check it. In that case, he would enforce the rule (fairly), which is why the example was brought up in this thread.
On the other hand, if you set up 4 yards away, everyone in the park knows that you are either (1) extremely spatially challenged, or (2) cheating by intentionally delaying the restart to give your team more time to set up defensively. The Ref will generally give the offense a couple of seconds to see if they want the quick kick anyway, then stop the match on their own, move you back a fair 10, ask you to mind the 10 yard requirement, then restart the match.
The second time there is a free kick and you set up 4 yards away, the Ref will generally go one of 3 ways–they will either just continue to stop the game and move you back the entire game, allowing you to cheat, or tell you sternly to knock it off, move you back a fair 10 yards, and either imply or tell you that a yellow card is in your future if you try it again, which should solve the problem, or quietly move you an unfair 12 yards back, and see what you do, which is the situation you were asking about.
In the latter case, as a player, you have backed yourself into a corner. You can either continue pretending you are severely spatially challenged and have been accidentally lining up wrong, quietly back up the unfair 12 yards, and line up properly for free kicks the rest of the game, as your attempts to cheat are now hurting rather than helping you, or complain to the Ref. If you complain to the Ref about the distance, you are essentially announcing to the world that not only were you intentionally attempting to cheat, but are now stupid enough to argue about it when caught and the Ref tried to give you a face-saving out that almost no one would have noticed.
The conversation tends to go like this–
Cheater: “Hey Ref! There’s no way that is just 10 yards!”
Ref (in a pleasant voice, speaking to cheater as if to a small child): “Oh, so you DO know what 10 yards looks like! Good! I was starting to wonder. If you think THIS is a long 10 yards, wait until you see how far I pace off the NEXT time you line up short…”
Cheater Team Member with brain: “Shut up and play, dude, before you get a yellow.”
I normally see this approach in High School. There tends to be a disconnect between HS sports administrators and soccer, and Yellow Cards are tracked, players can be suspended, Coaches/schools can be fined, etc. So the Refs are reluctant to throw a yellow for silly stuff, and prefer to find more creative solutions to stop unfair play.
YMMV.
tl;dr: What Telemark said about being a jerk
(JessMagic – you clearly stated you know soccer – a lot of the above information was for anyone that might not. I know you know all this, just haven’t seen it handled that way before)
I fairly recently had my ignorance on baselines fought (and I used to ump games at the little league level and below). To elaborate on what jonesj2205 said:
[QUOTE=MLB Rule 7.08]
Any runner is out when –
(a) (1) He runs more than three feet away from his baseline to avoid being tagged unless his action is to avoid interference with a fielder fielding a batted ball. A runner’s baseline is established when the tag attempt occurs and is a straight line from the runner to the base he is attempting to reach safely
[/QUOTE]
In other words, the runner can only be out of the baseline when a tag attempt is made. This is not a rule meant to prevent a large radius rounding of the bases and it doesn’t say you can’t run more than 3 feet from a straight line between the bases. There is effectively no such thing as a baseline until the tag attempt is made.
I was sort of right, they now allow more curve on a hockey stick.
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/hockey/nhl/2006-10-03-demers-curve_x.htm
Huh! I did not know that!
Many an EPL ref turn a blind eye to illegal pass backs.
jkirkman - got it! Thanks for the explanation. I didn’t get from your original post that you were talking about multiple free kicks.
In the UK, standing 4/5/6 yards away from a free kick until the ref moves you back is not really thought of as “cheating” or “unfair”, it’s just one of those things that defenders do to protect their goal.
I once saw the captain of the attacking team pace out the ten yards, in response to the referee repeatedly failing to move the wall back the correct distance. This was in a Scottish Premier League (top professional league in Scotland, not that that’s a huge deal) game, the attacking team were at home, and the crowd sarcastically counted “one, two, three, four…” in unison as the guy paced out the ten yards. Some refs would have seen the funny side, most however are too self-important to take such criticism. This ref fell into the latter category, and booked the guy.
Ten second shotclock for free throws in the NBA are not enforced unless your name is Dwight Howard, who actually takes closer to 20. The five second inbound clock tends to last closer to eight also.
Actually, not strictly true - all dismissals that can’t be agreed by the players on the field require the fielding side to ask the umpire “how’s that?”. I grant you that there are few walkers in the modern game, but the umpire’s only supposed to be there to adjudicate.
It can also be a bit hard at times. In a suburban game I was in, standard procedure was that the batting side would provide an umpire throughout their innings, and in this case I was he. The batsman padded the ball away from well outside the stumps, and just before the fielding team went up he picked up the ball to hand it to a fielder. As “howzat” (or, more correctly, “HAAAAAAAARGH”) is a general appeal, I had to give the batsman out and let the fielding captain know that he was being dismissed ‘handled the ball’ so that he could be recalled.