OOTP Developments Forums - View Single Post - What happen to the 10-run mercy rule.

abailey3313 · 05-10-2013, 02:37 PM

I just had an experience relative to this story.

I play in a co-ed softball rec league. Once a week we play a doubleheader. Evidently, the league used to be divided up by competition level (I'm not sure how they did this), but that's no longer the case. I play for one of the worst teams. We're 1-5 and have only one player that doesn't make two or three boneheaded plays or errors during the course of a game.

We played a team last night that squashed us 29-0 in three innings in the first game of our doubleheader. They batted through their line-up twice before we even had a chance to bat, then we were retired in three pitches. One thing our team noticed: their players never once swung at a first pitch, which is pretty rare in co-ed slow pitch. It's also seen as a bit of a no-no. Unless the pitches are totally unmanageable, you should go up swinging. Every count starts 1-1 and the pitchers are just lobbing them in, so it's not like you're trying to run up a pitch count, work a count, or wait for that perfect pitch. They're all meatballs. Anyway, after the three inning slaughter rule kicked in, we were all relieved, but we also didn't really feel like playing out the second game.

On the plus side, the opposing team were (mostly, aside from the taking pitches thing) really good sports. I had talked to their captain prior to the game and he told me that most of his team had been playing together for years and many are in multiple leagues. So early in the second game, with runners on first and second, one of their players hit a line drive to the gap in right center. I chased it down and hustled to throw it in, only to realize that they were sitting with bases loaded. The outfield grass isn't cut very short, so the ball tends to die in it. So it's pretty normal to turn what would be a single into a double simply because the outfielder has to charge a grounder through the infield so much. Come to find out, they'd decided to play out the second game hitting singles-only (except the two or three bombs they launched over the fence). One of my teammates, who played third base, said she was told they decided to do that because "it wasn't any fun for them or for us." I kind of felt like it was an insult. I mean, it was pretty obvious from the start that our teams weren't evenly matched. The three inning slaughter rule is in place to prevent ridiculous games from carrying on, so why not play it straight?

I don't like opponents who rub it in when they're winning, but I personally didn't feel like that's what they were doing until they stopped taking their bases. Settling for singles on obvious doubles or triples made me feel like they were saying, "see how much better we are? We don't even need to advance more than one base at a time."

05-10-2013, 02:37 PM	#17
abailey3313 Hall Of Famer Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 3,718	I just had an experience relative to this story. I play in a co-ed softball rec league. Once a week we play a doubleheader. Evidently, the league used to be divided up by competition level (I'm not sure how they did this), but that's no longer the case. I play for one of the worst teams. We're 1-5 and have only one player that doesn't make two or three boneheaded plays or errors during the course of a game. We played a team last night that squashed us 29-0 in three innings in the first game of our doubleheader. They batted through their line-up twice before we even had a chance to bat, then we were retired in three pitches. One thing our team noticed: their players never once swung at a first pitch, which is pretty rare in co-ed slow pitch. It's also seen as a bit of a no-no. Unless the pitches are totally unmanageable, you should go up swinging. Every count starts 1-1 and the pitchers are just lobbing them in, so it's not like you're trying to run up a pitch count, work a count, or wait for that perfect pitch. They're all meatballs. Anyway, after the three inning slaughter rule kicked in, we were all relieved, but we also didn't really feel like playing out the second game. On the plus side, the opposing team were (mostly, aside from the taking pitches thing) really good sports. I had talked to their captain prior to the game and he told me that most of his team had been playing together for years and many are in multiple leagues. So early in the second game, with runners on first and second, one of their players hit a line drive to the gap in right center. I chased it down and hustled to throw it in, only to realize that they were sitting with bases loaded. The outfield grass isn't cut very short, so the ball tends to die in it. So it's pretty normal to turn what would be a single into a double simply because the outfielder has to charge a grounder through the infield so much. Come to find out, they'd decided to play out the second game hitting singles-only (except the two or three bombs they launched over the fence). One of my teammates, who played third base, said she was told they decided to do that because "it wasn't any fun for them or for us." I kind of felt like it was an insult. I mean, it was pretty obvious from the start that our teams weren't evenly matched. The three inning slaughter rule is in place to prevent ridiculous games from carrying on, so why not play it straight? I don't like opponents who rub it in when they're winning, but I personally didn't feel like that's what they were doing until they stopped taking their bases. Settling for singles on obvious doubles or triples made me feel like they were saying, "see how much better we are? We don't even need to advance more than one base at a time." __________________