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I think that by the book this is a clear cut out.
I also understand that by all standards of fairness, most umpires would not WANT to call this out, and for good reason.
My only question that might give us some wiggleroom here is the word "assist". During an awarded base, is a gentle shove in the general direction of the awarded base really assisting? Absent a printed definition in the rulebook we are left to using dictionary definitions of words. Assisting someone is aiding them in achieving a goal. Since this is an awarded base, and BR was not debilitated in any way, could it be determined (within the framework of umpire judgement at least) by the umpire that such a shove, even if in the right direction, was not assisting the runner? IOW, did the shove actually help the runner achieve the base? Would it not have been just as easy for the runner to achieve the base if the shove was in the wrong direction? Was anything actually done during said shove to actually ASSIST here?
I don't know --- I'm just throwing that out there.
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"Many baseball fans look upon an umpire as a sort of necessary evil to the luxury of baseball, like the odor that follows an automobile." - Hall of Fame Pitcher Christy Mathewson
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