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This is a true story. I had a ball hit on the 1st base line clearly fair but the catcher yelled out "foul ball" and the BR turned to argue with me until he saw that I was emphatically pointing fair. The BR took off running again,I stuck out my left arm to indicate the delayed dead ball and the right fielder stopped chasing the ball. Ultimatly they got the ball back in but after the runner had made a wide turn of 3rd and thought twice about comming home. I awarded him home because his pause on the way to 1st was clearly the difference between his comming home or not. Naturally the defense argued that the right fielder stopped too but I pointed out to them that there's no rule to prevent you from obstructing a teammate. Would you have given him home at the time that the verbal obstruction occured? Yet a single,maybe double, turned into an inside the park home run and that is the reason we have a delayed dead ball, to give the offended team every opportunity to get what they can.
PS Mike I owe you an appology, when I first read your post above this I thought that you were admitting to being a little red faced until I looked at your graphic a little closer. Sorry about that.
[Edited by ChampaignBlue on May 8th, 2003 at 02:35 PM]
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