One of the Board members, who wishes to remain anonymous, is a friend of Kyle McNeely's and emailed him for his ruling, copy to me for posting.
Here's the play again:
The runner from second is advancing on a hit when he is obstructed by the third baseman. The runner then trips over the third base and, as he rises, is pushed toward home by the head coach. The umpire will rule:A. The obstruction balances out the interference. Let the play stand.
B. Penalize the obstruction since it occurred first.
C. Call the runner out after playing action is over.
D. Call the runner out and kill play immediately.
Here are Kyle's thoughts:
... only in baseball, right!! We have a case of obstruction followed by interference.
Basically, as officials, we deal with these in the order that they occur. Frankly, it will always be dealt with as obstruction followed by interference since most interference immediately kills the ball, so no obstruction can occur after the interference.
The only issue here is that with the coach's interference, the out is declared immediately (casebook 3.2.2b). The ball is not dead immediately but killed after playing action is over.
So, the answer is really one and two. R2 is out for the interference. That is not due to the obstruction, the coach made the decision to help the runner regardless of how R2 fell. His interference cannot be excused by the obstruction. After playing action is over, the ball is dead, and we return runners to the bases they had at the time of the interference. In this case, the batter-runner would be awarded first base.
Happy Holidays.
Kyle
Turns out, that's pretty much what Roland's notes said.