Answer this question, is raising your leg up to your chest, which means you are raising your leg a good two feet of the ground, a step bacward.
If that is a step backward, you've got no argument from me. You and I both know that ain't so.
There is no height given in your definition or the rule book. So we have to use our common sense. How do people normally step? Ask anyone to take a step backwards. If one out of a thousand lifts their knee up to their waist or higher to step backward, you'd be lucky.
All one thousand people would just lift their knee up enough so that their heel clears the ground by a few inches. Because that is the normal way people step, by convention.
And now your trying to argue that bringing the knee up to the chest is a step backward, when no one steps that way. That is excedingly weak.
The rule states the pitcher must
STEP BACKWARDS. Not do the "El Duque"!
Does raising a knee up high, like to your waist or chest, look like a motion associated with a pitch? It doesn't matter which leg it is, it is still a motion associated with a pitch. The only time it wouldn't be, is if a pitcher continually slides steps from the set.
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Originally posted by cbfoulds
LilLeaguer nailed you, K.
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Originally posted by Kaliix
Pardon my frustration, but how hard is this to understand?
8.01 (b) says the pitcher may "...step backward off the pitchers plate with his pivot foot."
Any normal definition of a step does not include someone bringing their knee up to meet their chest. That is not a step!
A step is when someone lifts their foot up enough to avoid dragging it on the ground. Maybe even a few extra inches, but no more. Watch anyone take a step and that is what they do.
Therefore, I'll say it again, the pitcher did not step backward off the pitchers plate with his pivot foot he brought it up to his chest first which is not a step backward. It is an exagerated lifting of the leg, followed by a step. That is a balk!
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Well- my Webster's New Collegiate defines a "step" as: an advance or movement made by one removal of the foot ... to advance or receed by raising and moving one foot to another resting place ... any combination of foot movements and body movements constituting a single unit or pattern [i.e.: dance step]..... None of which seems to exclude this "step". There is no definition of "step" in the Rule Book, so I'm afraid that you are just making this one ["normal definition of step"] up.
Ain't no rule says 3-6 inches is OK but 12 [or 18... or 36...] isn't.
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originally posted by Kaliix
Also, since he lifted his leg up to his chest, he was now not in contact with the pitchers plate. Since he was not in contact and was simulating a pitching motion while not in contact with the pitchers plate,Balk!
Either way.
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What "Pitching motion" was he "simulating" while not in contact w/ the rubber?
SURELY you are not claiming that lifting the PIVOT leg off the rubber was a "simulation" of the pitch while not-in-contact? Now, if he raised his arms/ "wound up" during this [admittedly "exagerated"] step w/ his pivot foot: OK, that's a balk; but it's for starting his delivery and not delivering to the plate. And, oops: the original sitch says nothing about F1 doing this. In fact, from the original post, F1's hands may never have moved from his "set".
As I originally [and now LilLeaguer] posted: lifting the PIVOT foot is kinda hard to make a part of anyone's pitching motion.
Got any actual RULE [from the Book, now - not "definitions" YOU make up] you think this might have violated? 'Cause he DID "step off backwards", and he DID NOT make any motion(s) naturally associated with his pitching delivery. I'll take a case-play cite, or the opinion of recogized or General Authority, but tortured logic and unpublished "normal definitions" that you are using aren't cutting it.
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