Stanwood forfeit benefits Monroe, costs Snohomish

Published 9:00 pm Wednesday, May 5, 2004

Neil Henderson had his sights set on fourth place, but this wasn’t quite how he planned for his Monroe High School baseball team to get there.

Stanwood used an ineligible pitcher in Tuesday’s game against Monroe and has forfeited what had been a 9-4 victory. Though the new outcome did not affect Stanwood’s hold on third place in the final Western Conference North Division standings, it had a drastic impact on Snohomish, Monroe and Cascade.

Snohomish was to play Monroe on Wednesday to break a tie for fifth place. The winner would have played a postseason game today. With the tie broken by Monroe’s additional victory by forfeit, Snohomish is out of the playoffs. Monroe (now 9-7 in the division and 11-9 overall) finishes the regular season tied with Cascade. Because the Bearcats beat Cascade twice, they leapfrog Cascade for fourth with an automatic bid into the Northwest District playoffs. Fifth-place Cascade plays at Shorewood at 4 p.m. today for the final district berth.

“You don’t really want to get a win that way,” said Henderson, whose team plays South No. 1 Edmonds-Woodway on Saturday. “The rules are printed out in black and white. And I know if I would have made the same mistake, somebody else would have called me on it.”

The rules stipulate that a player can pitch up to three innings in one game and still be eligible for the next contest. If that player pitches three innings plus one pitch, he is then ineligible for two calendar days. The Stanwood pitcher who was deemed ineligible pitched the final 3 2/3 innings of Monroe’s 10-0 victory over the Spartans on Monday.

Henderson was not immediately aware that it was the same player who had pitched the day before until a Monroe player pointed it out. Henderson had given his players a list of pitchers they would not face, and the player and Henderson were surprised to see the pitcher out there with Stanwood leading 6-4. Henderson notified the umpire, and the rest of the game was played under protest. He filled out a report, but learned that Stanwood already had self-reported the incident. The forfeiture was declared at Wednesday’s regularly scheduled district athletic directors meeting.

Bob Smithson, the Everett School District athletic director, said he made a similar mistake in the early 1990s when he was the baseball coach at Cascade and that it’s an easy mistake to make.

“The coach from Stanwood (Tony Wolden) realized that he had pitched the day before, but thought it only applied to starters,” Smithson said. “Young coach, first year of coaching. … It’s a shame that it had to happen. But, it’s a rules violation, so there is no protest per se.”

Henderson said Snohomish coach Kim Hammons called him Wednesday morning after reading The Herald and noticing that the pitcher had been in the game too long Monday to be used Tuesday. Hammons, a long-time coach at Snohomish, knew his team’s season was over if the results had been reported correctly.

“He understood,” Henderson said. “He said, ‘We worked hard to get there and we are disappointed. But you did your job and made sure everything was done the way it was supposed to.’”