Well that was nice and misleading, Mike.
In none of these cases is the ball dead prior to the batter hitting it. To say "the batter can't put a dead ball into play" is irrelevant. The ball's not dead (even in the extremely obvious cases) UNTIL the ball is hit or swung at.
We are not OVERanalyzing anything. The question is ... if the swing begins before the ball hits the ground, should we still be ruling dead ball - or is it only dead if the swing begins AFTER the ball hits the ground? I think we've all seen low pitches that strike the ground just barely prior to contacting the bat - and not seen it called dead.
|