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I am surprised at the number of people trying to defend their position on this play that are taking what I consider to be an untenable position. That an umpires verbalization of his call, which is designed to let those players in the immediate area know the call and act accordingly without seeing a visual signal is not to be believed. The player is required to act on their own information, under threat of penalty, regardless of what the umpire said.
So a batter that struck out and runs towards 1B should not stop when the umpires calls batter is out. If she thinks the catcher dropped the ball she should keep right on running because the umpire decision eventually might be reversed.
I had a runner stealing 2B pull up and not slide when she heard the PU call FOUL on a foul tip. She was an easy out because the catcher knew better and threw to 2B. Should I tell the runner, Too bad, you should have known that a foul tip is live ball and kept running.
On a bang-bang play the runner is called out and she gets up and walks away. The defender who knew that she dropped the ball tags her. Do we say to the runner that she should have known the ball was dropped? Thus was her responsibility to stay on the base pending a possible reversal of the call?
OK, maybe these scenarios are a little facetious, but players are trained to react to our calls. To suggest that they should ignore us because they should anticipate our call being overruled is ludicrous, IMO.
WMB
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