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Old Fri Jul 08, 2005, 04:53pm
UmpireErnie UmpireErnie is offline
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Join Date: Jun 2004
Posts: 359
As debeau states, it is a judgement call. You will not find language in the book that states jumping over the batted ball is or is not interference.

You may have interference in a "jumped over the ball" situation if the runner is attempting to screen the feilder as long as possible or trying to keep the feilder from charging the ball. There does not need to be contact by the runner with either the ball or the feilder for you to decide that interference has occured.

The way I have always treated this is that if the runner runs at a fairly contstant speed and has to jump over the ball to avoid being hit I am probably not going to have interference. Yes, perhaps the runner could have run a little faster and gotten out of the way of the ball but that is pretty much "guessing" an out. On the other hand, if the runner obvisouly changes speeds to time his/her arrival with the ball or stops in front of the ball or dances back and forth in front of the ball, I am probablay going to ring him/her up on an interference call. I have had runners do this and then get very irate; telling me that as long as the ball did not hit them it was simply "smart baserunning". BS!!
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