Quote:
Originally Posted by Manny A
You are correct. But for an umpire to tell that the ball hit the hand instead of the bat is quite difficult when it appears that the ball came off the handle on the swing. Just going by how the batter reacts is not enough to convince me that it definitely hit the batter's hands; she could be faking it to avoid the sure out. I would need to hear the sound of the contact as well.
As a side, some umpires debate this whole "ball hit hand then bat" or vice versa when a batter doesn't swing at an inside pitch and the ball contacts the batter's hand and the bat. I personally don't see how you can physically tell which came first, and I tend to give the batter the benefit of the doubt and send her to first base. But there are umpires who will argue that the ball hit the bat first and then hit the hand, and rule it a foul ball.
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Usually it's the sound. You can hear it come off metal, or you can hear that slappy sound from it coming off hand. If I hear metal, it hit bat - and if it hit both, based on physics alone, it almost definitely hit bat first.