The saga following yesterday’s Westhill-NFA state tournament softball game continues. Westhill coach Tom Pia just called: NFA is appealing to the CIAC the protest that the Vikings won and does not want to come back to Stamford today to complete the game. Westhill is awaiting a ruling and I will post the outcome as soon as I have it.
The fallout from the successful protest after its apparent 4-3 loss in the second round is the talk of the local sports community this morning. Right now the game story is No. 1 on the most e-mailed list on the Advocate web site.
Rather than rehash what happened, here is the link to the story: http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/localsports/ci_12505487
A couple of points before we see what happens with today’s possible compelling continuation of the game:
* A lot is being made of Westhill coach Tom Pia using the word “pinch” runner instead of “courtesy” runner when he inserted Cassandra Kish into the game after Jen Joseph’s single, and then failed to re-enter her. While it certainly appears to be getting into picky semantics, Pia did open up a technicality by using the wrong term.
* The person who comes out the worst in all of this is NFA coach Bryan Burdick, who outsmarted himself by waiting over an inning before contesting that Joseph should not have been allowed to continue to pitch. Burdick should have protested as soon as Joseph came out to pitch the seventh inning. By waiting until a situation where he could rattle the Vikings, he did not exactly come out as a role model for sportsmanship to his players. His comment to me about the delay — ”I’m a forgetful individual sometimes” — is most telling.
* A lot of people are criticizing home plate umpire Tommy Oliver for not knowing the rules. Oliver is a good umpire with a strong reputation, and the fact that it took a 20-minute conference call with a CIAC official, who had to bring in a rules interpreter, tells you what an unusual situation this was.
If Oliver did anything wrong, he should have allowed Joseph to continue pitching and then let NFA make the protest.
Now we await the next chapter in one of the most bizarre stories I have ever covered.
