Quote:
Originally posted by walter
He pointed out to us that the ball was tapped directly to the inbounder, she didn't have to reach for it, lunge for it, etc. She simply failed to catch it, bobbled it, and unfortunately, the ball deflected off her inbounds. The violation was called because the inbounder was the first to touch the ball inbounds.
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This makes your case less strong. By all of the "in favor" posts I have seen, the rationale was that the player who initially batted the ball met the criteria for the ball being "at disposal." It appears from this quote that the key is whether or not the player being batted to can easily control the bat. That is, if she had to reach for it, lunge, etc., that this would not or should not have resulted in a violation. In fact, that was what I was trying to convey in my first post. If the player had batted it poorly and the ball rolled away from the player standing OOB, I doubt you would have called any violation (and probably not started a 5 second count).
I think that this should come down to judging whether or not the OOB player made a controlled tap or bobbled/fumbled the ball, not whether or not the player could have controlled and failed to do so. If you judged that she controlled it, then it would be a throw in and her touching it first would be a violation. If she did not control it, regardless of whether or not she could have done so, it seems that you should not call the violation.