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I think I may have found the answer to this one as I was typing but what the heck. This happened today. Fed. Home team down 9-7. Bottom of 8th. 2 outs. Runners on 2nd and 3rd. Batter has a 2-2 count. Pitch comes in low, batter swings, ball does a skip off the ground into catchers mitt. No tag or put out attempt. I call strike three and watch to see what batter runner will do.
This has been a emotional game (back and forth) and batter turns around and walks a few feet toward the bench, stops in live ball territory and starts crying. Team that thinks it is victorious jumps around, laughs and throws the ball back to the circle and starts to leave the field. After 5-10 seconds coach walks over and without touching her tells her quitely to run to 1st. She composes herself, runs, and is standing on the bag when the defense realizes what happened. After kicking themself in the butt for a few minutes they get the next batter and the game was over.
After the game my partner and I both realized that we lost track of the girl on 2nd. Did she walk off the field in the confusion before batter runner reached 1st? And if she did would that have been the 3rd out and negate batter runners advance? By the way, runner on 3rd stayed there the entire time (for some unknown reason).
Fed 8-6-22 seems to answer my question but is it that cut and dry?
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