time limit

[cchwnn]

we have a time limit for each game. in many cases we tell umps not to start another inn with less than five minutes. why reason is some fields dont have lights and some games are double headers.
now a pony officals tells us that we need to play the full time, and start another inning even if it there is one minute left. how can we handle this.

[CoachHenry]

One way to help is to minimize the time between innings and between batters. Keeping the game moving like that will help reduce the game time.

[CoachHenry]

Or, maybe the official can put you in touch with other leages that have to deal with this and see what they have come up with.

Is there an advantage to being a Pony affiliate?

[cchwnn]

officals

i am more than sure we have this problem everwhere ,, where the local officals are person that now have something to do. and consider them self as god....believe it or not of the league.

so the problem was there was one min.left in the game and a board member team was the one that question our calling the game.

it has been an understanding for sometime .. now the new president who has been out of the cycle for years ,,wants us to play the whole time limit regardless .

[SimiBaseball]

If a PONY official is dictating how long your games will be, then he is overstepping his authority. If he is telling you to abide by your own bylaws, then that is reasonable. PONY leagues determine their own rules as to length of games. I would get rid of any "drop dead" rule and instead use a "no new inning" rule that gives you a reasonable amount of time to complete the inning. That way if the 3rd out occurs 10 seconds prior to that time, it is reasonable to start the last inning.

[jbolt_2000]

i am more than sure we have this problem everwhere ,, where the local officals are person that now have something to do. and consider them self as god....believe it or not of the league.

so the problem was there was one min.left in the game and a board member team was the one that question our calling the game.

it has been an understanding for sometime .. now the new president who has been out of the cycle for years ,,wants us to play the whole time limit regardless .

Safety of the kids is number one. If it is too dark to play then they should not be playing...Period.

We have a time limit as well and it is followed to the 'T'. We have lights, but there are always games after our so we try not to go more than two hours each game. The rule is for that a new inning cannot be started after an hour and 45 minutes. So if we started at 1:00PM, and the home team gets their third out at 2:45 we end the game. If it has gone 4 or more innings then it is a called game. If it is less than 4 innings that the game is postponed for a later date (if no date is available to reschedule the game then it is considered not an official game). This has worked out very well. We had this happen last year where we only went three innings and the game was called. The next time we played the team we played one inning from where we left off and then immidiately played the next regular game.


The other side of this is that if we start at 1:00PM and it is 2:43, then we start the next inning and finish it to completion (visitors and home teams get their full at-bats). Sometimes this takes longer than expected and causes the game after us to run late, but it ensures a complete game is played and we've followed the rules of play.