Quote:
Originally posted by FHwku
Maybe the ump was worried about verbal abuse.
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Except the offical word from the League in their statement was this:
"It appears the umpire was concerned that the coach or manager may have been using a language other than English ... to communicate potentially 'illegal' instructions to his players," Van Auken said in an e-mail to The Associated Press Friday.
MissMonika: That's part of my and moe.ron's point. You can't just speak something against the rules and therefore it's illegal. Anything illegal in baseball has to be seen basically - putting something on the ball to make it fly funny, intentionally slapping a player, etc. Even if the coach was telling the pitcher to put Vaseline on the ball, he could do that in English in a whisper in the kids ear and this ump wouldn't know. Or, for that matter, he could have a hand signal that means the same thing and the ump would have no clue what was being communicated. So to ban Spanish is just ignorant.