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Old Mon Jun 12, 2017, 04:37pm
Manny A Manny A is offline
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Join Date: Aug 2000
Location: Lowcountry, SC
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MT 73 View Post
What I am referring to is a bang bang contact--batter hits ball, ball then hits batter
Ok, in this case, it is a foul ball in softball and baseball. Even if you see that the batter's front foot is at the top of the box, clearly in fair territory, there are rules that essentially state that a batted ball that hits the batter while the batter is in the batter's box is foul. In USA Softball, that's under rule 7-4-J. I'm not going to search other rule sets for similar rulings since the OP is USA Softball.

Quote:
Originally Posted by MT 73 View Post
--or batter runs into the ball - as she is starting to first but has not yet left the box.
Now you have an entirely different situation, which is the case of the batter-runner contacting a live ball as he/she starts running to first base. That's usually something that happens after the ball has bounced on the ground or the plate, or is still in flight but hasn't directly hit the batter. That's not covered under rule 7-4-J; rather, as others have pointed out, it's covered under rule 8-2-F4 if the ball is fair when the batter-runner contacts it. Under this circumstance, you MUST decide if the ball was fair or foul. It's not an automatic just because the batter-runner was in the box when he/she made contact with the ball.


Quote:
Originally Posted by MT 73 View Post
In this situation--which has occurred to me dozens of times --I am not going to take a mental yardstick and decide if the ball was in the fair or foul side of the box.
And that's where you're flat-out wrong. You MUST judge where the ball was located when the batter-runner contact it. Yes, if you judge that the ball itself was in foul territory when the batter-runner made contact with it, there's really nothing a coach can do to dispute that call. But if you say the ball was foul because the batter-runner was in the box when he/she contacted the ball, then you have opened yourself up to a protest due to a misinterpretation of the rule. There is nothing in 8-2-F4 that provides protection to the batter-runner just because he/she is still in the box. The box isn't even mentioned in that rule.

You need to understand the difference between the two scenarios, because they are fundamentally different.
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