Umpires leave game, teams keep playing

[ElvisLives]

Baltimore at Pittsburgh, spring training game. Pittsburgh ahead after top of the ninth is completed. Umpires, naturally, depart. Game over. Well, the teams decided they wanted to get in some more work, especially some relief pitching, so they played the bottom of the ninth, anyway, without umpires.
Some media folks are insinuating that the umpires should have stuck around and worked the bottom of the 9th. No way. Somebody gets hurt in that half-inning, and they would get hammered and sued. Sorry. The game is over. Y'all do what you want to do. But we have fulfilled our obligation. Have a good evening.

[Ralph Damren]

Back in the 80's NFHS added the ten-run rule. If a team lead by 10+ after 5 innings -4 1/2 with home team leading - the game would be over. A home batter hit a grand slam in the bottom of the fifth to make it 10-0.  Time elapsed: 50 minutes. Both coaches pleaded to stay and let them play. We weren't as "sue-happy conscious" as we are today. We said that the game has now ended, BUT we will stay for a couple of innings BUT we won't call balls/strikes, we'll only call out/safe & fair/foul, sorta' like sandlot. The players loved it, everyone was swinging away and the two innings took 15 minutes.

In today's world, I'd agree with Elvis and the MLB umps, just git outa' town.

[ilyazhito]

Baltimore at Pittsburgh, spring training game. Pittsburgh ahead after top of the ninth is completed. Umpires, naturally, depart. Game over. Well, the teams decided they wanted to get in some more work, especially some relief pitching, so they played the bottom of the ninth, anyway, without umpires.
Some media folks are insinuating that the umpires should have stuck around and worked the bottom of the 9th. No way. Somebody gets hurt in that half-inning, and they would get hammered and sued. Sorry. The game is over. Y'all do what you want to do. But we have fulfilled our obligation. Have a good evening.

I had the same thing in a hockey game as a player. One of the rinks I play at has several mercy rules, a 6-goal rule where the clock runs continuously and a 10-goal rule where the game immediately ends. My team got beat 10-0 in the 2nd period, so the refs leave the ice. We then play a scrimmage for the remaining ice time. I had no issue with using the time to get some extra practice in, and I would not have expected the refs to stay for the scrimmage.