On Tuesday, May 27, 2014 the Peninsula baseball team beat Santa Monica 7-2 in the California's Southern Section Division 3 tournament. Directly before the game the Peninsula team was practicing on the field with a wiffle ball.
Santa Monica protested the game claiming the Peninsula team broke a CIF-SS Bluebook Bylaw 15.22.2 that states: “Teams entered in the baseball playoffs will not be permitted to take batting practice on the day of a playoff game prior to the commencement of the contest. Batting practice will be construed as ANY type of pitching motion with ANY type of ball from in front of the batter (including pitching machines and overhand throwing)” according to DailyBreeze.
Santa Monica will now be advancing to the quarterfinals in place of Peninsula High. The only person that can overturn the ruling is the head coach of the Santa Monica team but there has been no indication that he plans on doing so.
“We were doing it for 10-12 minutes,” said John Hangartner, coach of Peninsula High, “We weren’t trying to hide, or cheat. We simply didn’t know the rule.” During the violation, a Santa Monica assistant coach was filming the Peninsula team. Rather than warn the team of a possible violation, he used that information to change the outcome of the game once they had lost.
“They filmed us throwing/hitting wiffle balls to each other, and as a team we’re shocked that this happened,” Peninsula senior Ed Haus added. “We can’t believe their coach would blame a five-run game on us hitting wiffle balls prior to game time. It’s unreal.” Via yahoo.