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Somewhere over 1500 games - 0 calls of this kind for me as well.
For those of you that seem to think this is some kind of flaw in an umpire that he's not calling this, let me ask you two questions:
1) at the moment that you see the foot contacting the ground outside the box, where is the pitch? I cannot believe any peripheral vision nonsense, as this is about 45 degrees apart, and one or the other would be in your extreme peripheral vision unless you were actually looking at NEITHER the ball or the foot. Isn't it more important for you to know where the pitch is than the foot?
2) Truly, except for some extremely bizarre circumstance (I don't know, say a slap hitter taking 4 steps toward the pitcher before hitting it), is there any advantage gained by the batter's foot being marginally outside that box?
Note that I am not saying we should intentionally ignore a rule - what I'm saying is that A) it's impossible to do your duties and also see this violation, and B) if you're going to miss one or the other, isn't it better to miss the one for which there is no advantage gained?
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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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