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Originally Posted by BlitzkriegBob
David, you make excellent points, but if I understand you to say that you would not call obstruction if the fielder did not catch the ball and her foot prevented the runner from reaching third, I would have to disagree with you. Even if you have no intention of awarding the runner home, I believe it is necessary to make the call in that situation.
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No, you
still have to make the obstruction call - if for no other reason to let the participants know you've seen and acknowledged an infraction. But, substantively, in this case, it won't make any difference. If the fielder doesn't catch the ball, she would have been safe anyway, so the base award is completely academic - although the call
still has to be made.
This reminds me ...
Confession time: When coaching, we used to teach our pitchers, when covering home on a passed ball with a runner on 3rd, to position themselves so that their foot (not their body) was blocking the runner's access to the plate while waiting for the catcher to retrieve the ball. Even though it was clearly obstruction we figured it this way:
1) If the catcher can't get the ball to the pitcher in time to tag out the runner; what difference does the obstruction violation really make? The runner was going to be safe anyway. The umpire awarding the runner home does no harm.
2) If the catcher can get the ball to the pitcher soon enough to still tag out the runner, it probably isn't obstruction because the pitcher would likely get the ball soon enough so that no reasonable argument can be made that she was blocking the runner's access to the plate. Also, most umpires won't make this call - especially the weaker ones.
3) Some runners are intimidated when they see a base blocked causing them to slow down a bit. This added time may be just what is needed to tag the runner out. Obviously, this would be a case where there is
blatant obstruction. But scenario #1 and #2 are more likely, and, many umpires
still fail to call obstruction even in this final scenario.
The bottom line is that it is frequently worth the infraction on plays at the plate - especially when the pitcher is involved because the umpires tend to be harsher on catchers. They (the umpires)
look for obstruction by the catcher and often ignore a little obstruction by the pitcher. The catcher never did this - this was a pitcher-only thing.
Also, the intent of our pitcher's foot placement wasn't really to block access to the plate as a hard slide would easily knock her foot to the side, rather, it was to simply try to get the runner to slow down. This would usually be the case if the girl wasn't an accomplished or confident slider in the first place.
NOTE: Please spare me the inevitable sanctimonious "shame on you" posts that are sure to follow. "You're teaching your players to cheat!" Blah, blah, blah. It was competitive softball. Everybody knows the rules. We were willing to accept the risk of an obstruction call on the chance of getting an out. That's why there are umpires. They do
their job and coaches do
their job. If the umpire calls obstruction, then we have to live with it. We accept that without complaint. This was a rare play and I don't ever recall actually gaining any of the advantages described in this post. Usually the runner was
very safe or
very out. I
do recall one time, however, after a runner had scored in this fashion, the plate umpire politely told our pitcher, in a very matter-of-fact way, "You have to get of the way next time," as if she unknowingly was in the runner's way - not realizing that she was doing it
on purpose.
As you can probably tell, I never had any difficulty adjusting to wearing
either "hat."
David Emerling
Memphis, TN