[BoomerSooner]

I've got a good example of a girl taking advantage of this that I saw a couple of weeks ago at a game of my sister-in-law. The catcher from my sis-in-law's team, who is about the smartest player (softball-wise) that I've seen in a long time, realized as the pitch was about half-way to her that it was going to hit the ground in front of the plate and swung then immediately took off for first and continued to 2nd. Although the catcher blocked the ball well and came up throwing, I think she was a little caught off guard and air mailed the throw into center allowing the runner that was on 3rd to score. The umpires got together and eventually decided that it was perfectly legal, but I was a little skeptical considering she left before the ball ever actually hit the ground or was anywhere near the plate. I discussed it with the umps afterwards and our discussion centered on the issue of whether it was actually an attempt to hit the ball (thus a strike) or just a swing of the bat. I know the guys pretty well, and while they hadn't even considered calling it a ball, we all got a good laugh when we recalled that this went down witha a full-count making the result pretty much the same either way.