Quote:
Originally Posted by MD Longhorn
It's half a stride if for some reason you're suddenly striding perpendicular to your initial basepath...but people don't run that way. It's VERY uncommon for a runner to divert that much when running full speed, even after two strides - and when they do, it's obvious. Far more obvious than this runner.
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If a runner at full speed has a mere six-foot stride--certainly the minimum length for any adult-size player--and he diverts from his direct line at anything more than a 35-degree angle--VERY common--he's already more than three feet out of his baseline after one step. Pythagoras told me so.
That's fly-specking it, which nobody wants to do. What our clinic drills demonstrated, though, was that on plays at the plate runners avoiding a tag moved off their line by at least
four feet--the result of a six-foot stride and a 45-degree angle--more than half the time.
The lesson wasn't to seize the dirty end of the stick. It was just to show that this play is a lot like batter interference and fielder obstruction were ten years ago. Players were committing both without penalty all the time, but education and emphasis have greatly reduced that.
While far from certain, when I look at where the runner was relative to that patch where the turf is missing just outside the dirt circle at the plate when the tag was first attempted, and where he ended up relative to that patch after one step, it looks to me like he violated the three-feet limit. Even if so, I agree it's close enough to justify a pass on the out call.