|
As stated early, this play is legal in OBR.
However, at lower levels where a goal is to protect the players from injury, this play would have constituted malicious contact.
While recognizing your years as coaching and umpiring, I'll choose to side with a known authority on the rules and their interpretation... Jaska/Roder, whom write:
(NFHS 3-3-1n) A runner who maliciously crashes into any fielder when the contact was avoidable (or when contact was unavoidable, but the runnerÂ’s intent was to harm) is out and ejected, the ball is dead, and other runners must return to their last bases touched or passed at the time of the malicious crash. A runner who has scored and then crashes into a fielder is allowed his run unless he advanced as a result of being forced from third to home (such runner is still ejected).
[Edited by Matthew F on Jun 16th, 2005 at 12:40 PM]
|