[greymule]

"Not all obstruction in OBR causes the ball to become dead immediately."

True. It's dead immediately only if the obstructed runner is being directly played upon, not if the ball is on the warning track. But OBR rules are by and large pretty well thought out, though some are quite complicated and are usually simplified for school ball (e.g., appeals). But as someone who has worked OBR one night and ASA the next, I think it's unproductive to try to think of one ruleset in terms of the other or try to reconcile the two sets.

By using the word obstructs in its definition of INT, OBR technically violated a principle in writing methods, procedures, instructions, rules, etc., in that they used a term with a specific, narrow, important meaning in a generic way. Maybe blocks would have been a better choice than obstructs.

In editing things like employee manuals, I encounter this frequently. The same applies to alternating between two terms with the same meaning (e.g., computer instructions using screen and monitor interchangeably). It might seem obvious to the writer, but somebody is going to be confused.