[greymule]

Skahtboi: I don't doubt that the pitchers you cite do nothing that an umpire or coach would consider illegal. However, I would be very surprised if at the moment one of them makes the release, the ball of her pivot foot is not several inches in front of the rubber and in subtantial contact with the ground. And they are certainly not delivering during the drag; their pivot foot has stopped and is giving them plenty of support. Go out to a mound and try it yourself. You'll see—you are delivering off the back foot after the drag forward, not during it.

Check out the mound after a game. Forward from the rubber, the pitchers' shoes have carved a gully that ends in a larger depression from which they've been releasing the ball.

It's not that the motion is truly illegal: it is legal by tradition and custom. But because the definition of "crow hop" is not precisely and accurately worded, that motion is in technical violation. Therefore, the rule should be refined to be more precise.

One simple example: the ASA definition specifies "steps, hops, or drags." But ask any umpire, and he'll tell you that as long as the pitcher drags the foot and doesn't hop (get into the air), she's OK. After all, it's the crow hop that's illegal, so if there's no hop. . . . In fact, the Fed interpreter in New Jersey says that the pitcher's foot can lose contact with the ground if the gully gets deep, as long as the foot does not rise above the level of the surrounding ground! Well, these are prima facie contradictions of the rule book.

Incidentally, I'm not saying that rewording the rule would be easy. It would require analysis of films, with plenty of stop action, as well as people who know how to write very precisely, not ASA's forte. (I think that one aspect would be a lack of immediate progression in the delivery. What we usually call illegal involves a noticeable break between the elements of the delivery.) It might indeed take "25 pages of zig-zag lines"!

[Edited by greymule on May 16th, 2003 at 05:37 PM]