[IRISHMAFIA]

Originally Posted by Tru_in_Blu

From the March 2007 Rule Clarifications and Plays on the ASA Website, there was a section on "Tips for Judging Interference".

The first paragraph reads:

"In an effort to help umpires become more uniform in judging interference throughout the country, the ASA has addressed several rules relating to interference that contained the word "intentional". Specifically, the work "intentional" has been removed from Rule 7, Section 7 Q; Rule 8, Section 2 F [3]; Rule 8, Section 7 3 [3]; and, Rule 8, Section 7 P. Umpires now need only to base their decision on whether interference occurred or did not occur, and not the intentions of the offensive player. Moreover, removing the word "intentional" from these sections aligns these rules with the definition of INTERFERENCE in Rule 1.

And this is the next paragraph:

SITUATION 1: With no outs and R1 on 2B, B2 swings at and misses the pitch. R1 breaks for 3B and while F2 is throwing to 3B in an attempt to retire R1, B2, while remaining in the batter’s box, backs up to readjust their footing and bumps into F2 causing an errant throw. RULING: B2 is guilty of interference. The ball is dead, B2 is out and R1 must return to 2B. (Rule 7, Section 6 Q)

Please note that the batter actually did something to interfere. If that batter just stood there, it is nothing. The argument for removing "intentional" from some of the rules was that the umpire had to judge the offensive player's actions as to whether it was interference or not. IOW, the player must do something that caused the INT.