[Gee]

Carter, this is my last time by.

Your right I won't change my mind. I'm fully confident in my belief that 7.10(b) clearly means that a runner that has failed to touch a base in passing must touch his advance base before he is guilty of touching the bases out of order and liable to be appealed for a missed base.

Also that 7.10(d) has been extended to all bases including home and further that under today's rules, a runner is not guilty of missing a base, nor is he appealable, until he leaves the immediate area of that base. It naturally follows that a runner is not guilty of missing a base and appealable as soon as he fails to touch a base in passing. Unfortunately, Mr. K. disagrees with all three points.

At least you acknowledge that 7.10(d) has been extended to all bases but you fail to agree that under 7.10(b) a runner that has failed to touch a base in passing must touch his advance base, when applicable, before he is guilty of missing a base and appealable. Let me explain what led me to that conclusion.


After writing 7.10(b) the rule makers found that it would not be applicable to the plate as their is no advance base so to make it compatible they used leaving the immediate area of the plate before the runner could be guilty of missing the plate and appealable and pretty close to (b).

Now I ask you, why did they use leaving the immediate area of the plate for the violation and not the plate itself? As I have said above, they simply wanted to make (d) compatible with (b). Since (b) required touching the advance base and there is no advance base after the plate they chose the immediate area, simple.

If, as you had originally thought, (b) means the runner is guilty of missing a base and appealable the moment the runner passed it, why in the world would they not keep (d) the same rather than make the immediate area applicable. Obviously your original though was wrong.

Circa 1975, Nick Bremigan of the Baseball Umpires Development group didn't like the two different missed base rules and compromised with MLB to extend 7.10(d) to all bases which was successful.

By doing that they achieved two things. 1. They made the missed base rule on the bases the same as the missed base rule at the plate and 2. They narrowed the point of a missed base appeal from the advance base to the immediate area of the missed base so the fielder would not have to leave his immediate area to make the tag.

Now do me a favor. If you don't follow that or don't agree with it that is your choice but absent some reasonably valid counter to my explanation just ignore it. G.

[Edited by Gee on Aug 19th, 2004 at 09:04 AM]