[Gee]

Jim. You surprise me. In this type of interference there is no delayed dead ball and there is no incidental contact when the runner makes contact with the fielder when he is in the act of fielding a ball. You see contact, you kill it, right by the numbers.

Are you going to allow a run to score in order to avoid a confrontation with Franco, not me. The interference might not have effected the play but how do you know that at the time of contact? If the throw happened to go off target what do you do then? Could be a real blowout.

I don't know what Franco's exact point was but the umpire did exactly what he was supposed to do. Franco came out last week on a jumpstep pickoff that went out of play. U1 awarded R1 second. Franco wanted two. Franco was thrown and I wish Henry would do the same thing, the guy belongs in T-ball. G.
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Originally posted by Jim Porter

The problem is that to make that call is to invite exactly what happened - a long visit by the manager. Terry Francona was on the field for quite awhile while the umpires explained and explained and explained. He still walked away shaking his head.

Whereas, if the umpires had simply waited to see if the contact affected play, I doubt anyone would've had a second thought. The play looked routine. The game would've continued without incident.

But that's exactly what happened. The crowd was going wild, the run scored, and no one knew until the play was over that anything out of the ordinary had happened. The umpires had to call the runner who had scored back onto the field. In fact, the contact wasn't noticable in real-time on television. They had to slow motion replay to see what happened. That's how routine the play looked.

[Edited by Jim Porter on Aug 13th, 2004 at 02:53 AM]