Incidental Contact
 

Watching a 10U baseball game last night there was a pop up on the 1st base line between home and 1st. Pitcher is running over and looking up to try to catch the ball, The batter is looking down running to 1st base. He was right on the baseline. They never saw each other and they collided the ball drops in foul territory. The umpire called him out. I think it should have been called incidental contact batter has a strike and play on.

You thought incorrectly.

Runners and batter-runners may not interfere with a fielder attempting to make an initial play on a batted ball, which is exactly what happened in the situation you describe.

You would be wrong!

A base runner, in your case a BR, must avoid a fielder attempting to make a play on a batted ball.

Interference, BR is out. All other runners return to base occupied at TOP.

The above two posts both assume that F1 was the "protected fielder" (a reasonable assumption, to be sure, but not an absolute).

If F3 or F2 was the protected fielder, then this would be OBS, and the play would be treated as a foul ball.

By calling it "incidental" I think the OP may be suggesting the contact was "unintentional", and it most likely was unintentional from the description of the play. The key, however, is that intent is not a factor when determining interference on a fielder making the initial play on a ball.

The runner/batter runner has a responsibility to avoid interference with the fielder in this situation. The out isn't for the contact, but rather for failing to avoid interfering with the fielder. Had the fielder still caught the ball, there wouldn't be interference even if the contact was intentional because the contact didn't interfere with the fielders ability to make a play (although there might be other penalties depending on the nature of the contact).

It was a bang bang play where the ball F1 and the runner all met at the same time. It was "unintentional". There was no way the runner could avoid F1. It was a shallow pop up on the 1st baseline.

I have to disagree with this. As soon as the protected fielder is contacted or alters his play on the ball, we have interference and the play should be killed. We don't wait to see what happens next. The hypothetical catch never happened.

BR is out for interference...them's the breaks sometimes.

The runner could've avoided interfering by either running wide on either the fair or foul side of the line.

(I know what you're thinking: "that means he has to run out of the baseline, which makes him out"... the "out of the baseline" rule ONLY applies when a fielder is attempting to tag a runner. If a fielder isn't attempting a tag, the runner can run wherever he wants to as long as he's not committing interference by doing so.)

The protected fielder has an absolute right to the batted ball; the runner has an absolute obligation to avoid him.

The infraction and subsequent penalty is for interference not for contact. I was taught not to kill the play, because a double play can only be awarded if the interference was intentional, so if you kill every play only based on contact, you might prevent the defense from making 2 outs just because of the contact.

For example, let's add a runner on 1st to the OP's situation and turn the play into a hit and run. Based on the description, I don't consider the BR's contact to be a willful and/or deliberate attempt to prevent a double play (which by rule requires a dead ball, BR and runner closest to home are out). I allow the play to go on and F1 catches the ball and is able to throw to F3 to appeal the runner leaving early for another out on the play. If F1 is unable to make the play due to the contact, I then exercise my judgement that the BR did indeed interfere with F1 and call the BR out and return the runner to 1st. If I kill the play, I've penalized the defense for an infraction committed by the offense.

The other reason you don't kill the play immediately on a contact is that it is possible the ball goes out of play and that you can't have interference if there couldn't have been a play.

Another example (because I love examples), runner on 1st accidentally collides with F3 on a high pop up that drifts 10 feet over the fence in foul territory beyond 1st base. F3 had the best chance to make a play but because the runner ran into him doesn't make it to the fence. Was there interference? Is the runner out simply for contacting F3 even though there was no play to be made?

You were taught incorrectly. There is exactly one time in which a play is allowed to play out after interference with a protected fielder, and that's on a runner interfering on a declared IFF that may become foul.

MLBUM is specific in its guidelines--with no intent, even if a double play is possible, the interfering runner is the only one that is out.

FED allows two out if an obvious double play is hindered (8-4-1h.)

NCAA is substantially the same as OBR (8-5d.)

Then you don't have a protected fielder. There doesn't have to be one.

I agree play is dead if the call is interference with the exception you mentioned. My point is that while contact is most likely going to lead to a call of interference, the contact by itself doesn't necessarily result in a call of interference.

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.

There could have been a play on the ball up. Until it can be determined that the ball is definitely out of play, F3 might have been able to make a play. When the contact occurred the ball might have still been over the playing surface.

I would be prepared to call interference in this situation if the ball landed 10 feet inside the fence and I judge F3 had a chance to make the play, but if I call time immediately on contact and call the runner out for interference and the ball continues to drift and falls 10 feet outside the fence, I'd look a little foolish.

You still kill it immediately. Any potential catch does not occur. If the ball does drift out of play, you don't call the runner out.

Interference. R2 is out, BR gets 1B, R1 advances as forced.

In OBR, too bad. That's the rule.

Then it's interference on the batter-runner.

I'm going to concede defeat on this one and appreciate you guys for pushing me to think about this and check into it some more.

I talked with a couple of guys that I've worked with and they also helped set me on the right path along with you guys. They did acknowledge that they've also heard the same idea that contact with the fielder is only interference if it actually causes the fielder to not be able to make they play, but explained to me why contact is sufficient to call interference.

They did agree that my example feels like a hole in the rule, but reminded me that the quality of play at our level (HS/MS age and below) decreases the likelihood of the defender being contacted and still being able to complete the double play. Conversely, at higher levels there is a greater expectation that runners be able to avoid contact with the fielder and thus the likelihood of determining there was intent goes up as well.

All that said, I still feel like the OBR language could be cleaned up. Ironically, one of the points made that helped change my view on this created an interesting discussion about the situation I used in which F3 is interfered with by the runner at 1B on a fly ball that ultimately drifts out of play. One of my colleagues pointed me to the language in 6.01(a10) that says "it is interference by a batter or runner when: he fails to avoid a field who is attempting to field a batted ball...". I'm not arguing that we should start calling outs for interference if the ball ends up out of play, but a literal interpretation of the rule as written suggests that as long as F3 was attempting to make a play, the contact by the runner qualifies as interference. I realize this isn't the intent of the rule but it was an interesting discussion.

Regardless of all of that, thank you guys for preventing me from making a potential mistake. I've been fortunate enough that all of my interference calls have been clear-cut, routine situations that aren't of the nature I described.

Right. The rule book (in any code) doesn't always say what it means or mean what it says.

Evans identified 234 or some such number of errors and mis-statements in OBR.

What if....
 

Let's say that just like in the OP the pop up is toward the 1st base line and fair, but it is F2 that the BR gets tangled with and it is just a short distance from home plate. BR is essentially just taking off and so is F2. F2 still has time to make the play, it would seem, but the ball pops out of his mitt. F2 could have come out towards the mound (in the way we clear the catcher for a ground out w/ bases empty), but his first move is towards 1st base, just as the BR's first move is towards first base. Do any of you see it differently in this example?

Unless the Batter-runner does something blatantly obvious to interfere with the fielder, all you have is two players doing what they are supposed to.

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.