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Originally Posted by Robert Goodman
...but what's hard to understand is how R2 gained an unfair advantage by walking directly to 2B, or how the game is served by allowing the obvious lack of touching 1B to be appealed.
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You know, that is one thing that has been a brain thorn to me since I made the original post. The purpose of the appeal play, and the whole rulebook for that matter, is to keep teams from gaining an unfair advantage. Since the pitcher verbalized he wanted to intentionally walk both batters to load the bases, there doesn't seem to be an advantage gained by the runner on 2nd not touching first. Yes, by the book you must touch first before you can occupy second, that's why I agreed with the ump on-air about the out call. But now that I think about it, there was no unfair advantage since the end result, with a dead ball, was what the defense verbalized...bases loaded setting up an out at any base.