[Andy]

My opinion only.....

Several years ago, I had a play where a batter was hit by a pitch while she was clearly out of the batter's box. She was not swinging and the pitch was not in the strike zone. I called the dead ball and awarded her first base. the defensive coach went nuts claiming that her being out of the box negated the HBP and she was not entitled to first base. He wanted to protest, and with me being a fairly new umpire at the time, stopped the game and sent for the UIC. His response was that it didn't matter where the batter was, if the pitch wasn't a strike, and the batter tried to avoid it, the batter gets first base. This happened well before the recent rule change taking away the requirement for the batter to attempt to avoid the errant pitch.

It is my opinion that this philosophy still holds true. The intent of the rule change was to take away the requirement for the batter to attempt to avoid an errant pitch. The addition of "in the batter's box" was placed there to help further define what may be considered an errant pitch, not to limit the effect of the rule to pitches only in that location. In rule sets where the "attempt to avoid" requirement has been removed, I will continue to award first base to batter that is hit by a pitch that is not a strike.

This excludes NCAA, which specifically addresses a batter being hit with the pitch that is outside of the batter's box.