West Michigan High School Baseball will be offering articles regarding various rules to help our readers better understand the game. It’s important that everyone involved in the game understand the rules – but it’s also helpful for parents and fans to get a better understanding of the rules.

We will be covering Rule Myths, commonly misunderstood rules and rule differences. So, let’s start at the beginning!

If you want to really understand the rules of baseball, it’s important to understand – and follow – Rule #1…

“Know the Rules You Are Playing Under!”

First – since we are a web site devoted to High School Baseball – it’s easy to understand that we play under high school rules (see NFHS below). But, to understand the rules of baseball, you need to understand that some differences exist between the various rule sets.

It seems pretty obvious that coaches, umpires, players and fans would know the rules the game is being played under, but it isn’t. It gets very complicated when, for example, a summer travel team plays in a league and tournaments under several different organizations.

For example. let’s assume you coach a 16U travel team. Here are some very likely scenarios during a season:

The team plays in the local Mickey Mantle League. This is AABC and uses Official Baseball Rules (with some amendments).
The team plays in a couple Triple Crown tournaments (High School Rules with amendments).
The team plays in some USSSA tournaments (OBR with some amendments)

This team needs to understand two complete sets of rules – OBR and NFHS – and they need to understand the (not insignificant) changes made to the respective rules by AABC,Triple Crown and USSSA.

That’s one reason we are offering these articles – to help umpires, coaches, players and fans to understand not only the three sets of basic rules (OBR, NCAA & NFHS) but also the differences between the rules of the various youth organizations.

Let’s start with the three basic sets of rules. Baseball is generally (always for our purposes) covered by one of three sets of rules.

They are:

OFFICIAL BASEBALL RULES (OBR)

This set of rules is the granddaddy of them all – the rules from which all other rules were adapted. They are commonly know as OBR – and that’s how we refer to them here at westmichiganhighschoolbaseball.com.

You may see people refer to it as Major League Rules (MLB) or Official Rules of Baseball (ORB). ORB is not correct – it should always be called OBR. MLB uses OBR – but they add a few additional rules – such as the new coaches helmet rule. Many reference materials have been created to further clarify OBR. We usually rely on two:

The Rules of Professional Baseball by Chris Jaksa and Rick Roder. Commonly called Jaksa/Roder, we will also refer to it as J/R.

PBUC Umpire Manual by Professional Baseball Umpire Corporation. Commonly called PBUC (that’s how we refer to it), the PBUC is used by all minor league umpires and since that’s where the MLB umpires come from, it’s used by them. PBUC works closely with MLB to coordinate rule changes.

NATIONAL FEDERATION OF HIGH SCHOOLS (NFHS)

Commonly referred to as NFHS or FED (we use NFHS). This is a complete rewrite of OBR. The rules stand alone, as they make no reference to OBR (except to note what NFHS considers to be the major differences) and cover every single area of the rules.

NFHS also issues Case Books each year that are considered part of the rules. Please note, that many forums refer to FED as “federation baseball” – travel baseball. These people aren’t aware that many umpires refer to High School baseball rules as FED. This is why we don’t use FED – we use NFHS. Note, also, that very few travel baseball organizations use NFHS rules – so using FED to mean both the NFHS rules and travel baseball can be confusing.

NATIONAL COLLEGIATE ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION (NCAA)

Commonly referred to as NCAA, these rules are also a complete rewrite of OBR. They stand alone as the cover every area of the rules and make no reference to OBR – except to point out what they consider to be the major differences.

NCAA is the least used set of rules outside of the college ranks. All NCAA and NJCAA member colleges use these rules, but few, if any, other organizations use them.

Study Guide: College Baseball Rules: An In-Depth Analysis of NCAA Baseball Rules
by George Demetriou is a great resource for understanding the NCAA rules. When we refer to it, we use the abbreviation SG.

OTHER ORGANIZATIONS

Following is a list of baseball organizations and the rules they use. Please note that virtually every other organization makes their own amendments to the rules they choose to follow. In most cases, one of the first statements in every organizations rule books points out which of the three basic rules it follows. They usually say something like this “any rule not addressed in this rule book shall be covered by the Official Baseball Rules…”

These organizations use OBR:

Major League Baseball
Minor League Baseball
AABC
AAYBA
American Legion
Babe Ruth (including Cal Ripken Baseball)
Cal Ripken Baseball (including Babe Ruth)
Canadian Baseball
Dixie
Dizzy Dean
Hap Dumont
IBAF
Little League (though LL has completely rewritten the rules and make no mention of OBR)
MABL/MSBL
NABF
NAIA (yes, the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics uses OBR, not NCAA)
NBC
PONY
USABF
USSSA

These organizations use NFHS:

All member High Schools
AAU
BPA
Note – their rule book says that “Baseball Federation Rule Book will cover any rule not covered….”
We have confirmed that this means NFHS
CABA
Triple Crown

These organizations use NCAA:

All NCAA member colleges and universities
All NJCAA member colleges (junior colleges)
Note: NAIA member colleges DO NOT use NCAA rules – they use OBR

If you know of a national organization that isn’t listed, please send us an email (admin@westmichiganhighschoolbaseball.com). If you think we have any organizations rule reference wrong – please send a email for that, too. We will research any issues sent to us and will either change our articles or will respond with why we feel our article is correct.