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You're absolutely right on the rule here: contact between F2 and BR should be ruled incidental unless one of them does something intentional to hinder the other.
So the other piece is judgment: you were there, and you saw nothing intentional. That's good enough for me.
If U3 thinks that hesitation on this play is evidence of intent -- well, I disagree. For me, I'd be looking for a shove or a grab: something obvious to granny in the stands.
You say: "The key point as I see it is intent of the BR. If he hesitates, is this clearly a sign to the fact that he is trying to disrupt F2 from making a play? Since F2 made a hash out of the play, that argument seems plausible."
I disagree that this argument is plausible. What F2 does or fails to do is no evidence of the BR's intent. Only the BR's behavior is evidence; and for me, hesitation is not necessarily evidence of intent to hinder.
I guess I could imagine a play where hesitation was such evidence: BR would have to see the ball and deliberately get in F2's way, and all that would have to be obvious to me as PU. It doesn't sound like that's what you saw.
U3 sounds like he's pretty impressed with himself and his own powers of judgment, 120 feet away from this play. Not much you can do with that. :shrug:
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Cheers,
mb
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