[greymule]

jmkupka, Official Baseball Rules (OBR) and ASA rules differ in a thousand ways beyond the obvious ones that anyone can see while watching a game. It is best if you do not attempt to apply any baseball rules to softball or vice versa.

Obstruction, interference, awarding of bases, appeals of missed bases, scoring of runs, force plays, batting out of order, even the batter having a foot in contact with the plate when making contact—there are key differences in all these areas.

OBR have changed little over the past century. Somebody from 1909 reading today's rule book would recognize almost all of it. Therefore, OBR are also supplemented by volumes of interpretation (J/R, PBUC, MLBUM, BRD, Evans).

Further, OBR rules are very different from the rules that apply to high school and college baseball games.

In the clip, it looks to me that the throw did not hit Cabrera but got away from F5 just before the contact. But even with the ball loose, Cabrera was still being directly played upon (I guess), and there was contact, even though Cabrera did deliberately get himself a little extra-tangled with the fielder. And that might have gotten him the award of home. Had there been minimal contact just after the ball got away (technically OBS), with Cabrera diving right back into 3B, I suspect there would have been no call.