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Strange situation. Very strange indeed.
I'd consider the actions of the players in this instance:
You said that the batter always stays in the box for his "practice" swings when the catcher throws the ball back to the pitcher. If he always does that, the catcher should learn and know to avoid it. Hence, I would just laugh and stop any baserunners from advancing and put the ball in play when it got to the pitcher.
However, there was a runner on third. We all know that players need to be aware of game situations. If he's moving around in the box in an unreasonable manner (I'd consider most anything unreasonable until the ball left the catcher's hand), then I'd call him out for interference since we do know that there's a runner on third and his "practice" swings could certainly be considered interference due to the space they take and the way they move a batter around in the box, obscuring the catcher's ability to choose to go to the left or right of the batter should he try a pickoff.
In this situation I'd more than likely call the batter out if I felt the runner on third had a nice leadoff. Worse yet, it's possible to call the runner out for his actions, too, although sending him back to third would be the far better thing to do in such an odd situation.
But I think I'd have to see a play like this to make a good ruling.
So what did happen on this play? Or are you teasing us?
-Craig
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