[mbyron]

There are four possible outcomes to this play.

1. Train wreck: everyone is doing what he should be, throw pulls catcher into runner's path as he tries to avoid contact. Ruling: play the bounce.

2. Obstruction: catcher (or any fielder) sets up in the base path denying access to the base without the ball. The runner must still slide or try to avoid contact with the fielder. Ruling: delayed dead ball until end of playing action, award runner home.

3. Interference: runner fails to slide or try to avoid contact with fielder, but the contact is not severe enough to be malicious contact. Ruling: immediate dead ball, runner is out whether or not he scores on the play.

4. Malicious contact: runner crashes the catcher intentionally. Ruling: immediate dead ball, runner is out (if he didn't score first) and ejected.

Which of these applies is, of course, umpire judgment. It's difficult to assess anyone's ruling on a play without seeing the play.

That said, obstruction and malicious contact could conceivably be combined here, if one fielder obstructed the runner, who subsequently maliciously contacted a different fielder. That's apparently what the umpires ruled.

However, I would not have made the award they did: malicious contact by rule supersedes obstruction, and the runner should have been called out if the MC occurred before he scored, in addition to being ejected.

We had another thread recently with both MC and OBS, but the difference was that in that case the MC was not caused by the obstructed runner (the batter was obstructed, and R3 committed the MC). In that case, I argued for enforcing both penalties against the different runners.

In this case, it's the same runner tangling with different fielders. Given that it's the same runner, I believe that the principle that "malicious contact supersedes obstruction" applies: being obstructed does not give the runner the right to crash the catcher.