Quote:
Originally Posted by BoomerSooner
What would be the call in the following situation:
Runners on 1st and 2nd, no outs. Batter hits a ground ball to the shortstop who is setup to field the ball when the runner from 2nd base trips over him in an attempt to avoid interfering with him prior to the ball arriving (interpret as unintentional, not willful or deliberate contact intended to break up a double play). The shortstop is still able to field the ball, tag the runner that is laying on the ground and still throw to first to such that the BR is also out.
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I think this is an interesting one because of the difference between intentional and unintentional spelled out in 6.01a7 and 6.01a10.
Tongue in cheek response...
If it's the home team on offense, you have unintentional interference on R2, the rule grabs R2 on the interference and awards BR first and R1 advances to second due to the award to the BR.
If it's the visiting team on offense, it's intentional, and the rule gets R2 on interference, R1 for a second out (because R2 was clearly trying to break up the double play), and the BR gets first base (only because the rule won't let me grab all three).
I don't like the flexibility of intentional/unintentional rules for the reasons listed in my sarcastic answer...it would be difficult for a team to contest such a ruling after the fact if it drew an argument.
In my sole opinion, the penalty should be maximized at all times so the runners always can be assumed to have done everything they could to avoid the contact in the first place.