|
My feeling on this is: "How close is close?" That's why I hate rules like this. You say the ball arrived a half of a second after the runner. Is that close? What about 1 second, or 1.5 or 2 seconds? The FED rule book says that a runner cannot delibretly crash into a fielder. This is a perfectly fine rule and doesn't need to be modified with a MUST SLIDE rule.
In my judgement, if a runner can stop on a base without colliding with the fielder BEFORE the ball arrives, then the play was not "close."
SamC
|