High school baseball coaches preach from the first day of practice to the last day the fundamentals of the game.

Well, managers and coaches were put to the forefront in the past couple of weeks when errors on their lineup card cost their respective team an out and moved one of the game’s best hitters to the bench and put the pitcher in the No. 3 spot in the batting order.

That mistake was Joe Maddon’s and the Tampa Bay Rays back on May 17 which took Evan Longoria out of the lineup and forced pitcher Andy Sonnanstine to hit third in the Rays’ batting order.

For baseball coaches at the high school level it was a wake-up call in some of the minute details of the game.

“I always fill out my lineups on a sheet of loose leaf the night before a game and have one of my assistants look it over to make sure it’s OK,” Oak Creek coach Scott Holler said. “It’s something I’m pretty anal about.”

That situation, which happened because Maddon listed  two third basemen on the lineup card and Ben Zobrist had taken the field to play the position for the top of the first inning.

When Cleveland manager Eric Wedge questioned the lineup card after the top of the opening inning, Longoria was taken out of the No. 3 spot and Sonnanstine was inserted.

“In the pros, the DH is used only for the pitcher, but at the high school level you can DH for any player in the field,” said Wisconsin Umpires Association president Dan DeRemer. “In high school the DH has re-entry privileges just like any other position player

“They can be pinch hit for one inning and brought back to hit later in the game.

“The only time you would lose the DH is if that player took the field to play for the position player he was hitting for.”

The other lineup snafu happened in Houston in a game between the Astros and Brewers when Michael Bourn batted out of order in the first inning, nullifying a single.

Houston manager Cecil Cooper said the gaffe happened because the wrong lineup card was submitted that had Kazuo Matsui leading off.

“I put [the lineup card] in my pocket today and didn't even check it, and usually I check it everyday, but for some reason I didn't check, and no one else checked it,” Cooper said after the game in the Astros.com postgame story. “There's four people who check it, but today nobody checked it and it's my responsibility. It happened, it's over. It is embarrassing, but we won the game.”

DeRemer said the ruling would have been the same at the high school level, but does have some quirks and ways to save outs for the offense if it is realized before the batter in question gets a hit or gets an out.

“This is one of the easiest ones to solve,” DeRemer said, citing rule 7.1.2 in the 2009 NFHS Baseball Casebook. “It depends on when the offensive or defensive coach realizes the error.

“If the coach for the batting team realizes it when the batter already has a 2-1 count, he can call that batter back and have the correct batter continue the at-bat without consequence. “

The defensive team would most certainly wait until the player has finished his at-bat to protest.

“It’s all about the timing for when the infraction is found,” DeRemer said. “After the next batter steps up, you would see that coach step up and call the lineup into question.

“The batter that would have originally been up is ruled out. So if the player that should have batted second bats first, he is out and called back up to the plate in his scheduled spot in the lineup.”

The fact that it happened at the Major League level shows it can happen to the best of coaches and the most experienced ones. Sometimes it is something that gets taken for granted in the game of baseball.

“What if it dictates the outcome of a game?” Holler said. “You get late into a season and need that one game that you lost because of something as simple as a lineup card and it is pretty huge. It shows how big every game is.”

Be sure to check out the Men In Blue: Umpires video series.

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