In this situation, the batter has a habit of swinging his bat (practicing) while still in the batter's box after every pitch. This time however, just by chance, his swing takes place as the catcher is throwing the ball back to the pitcher. The ball is drilled into left centerfield. Runner on 3rd comes home to score. Do you let the run stand?

FED rule 7-5-5

Interference by a batter when interfering with the catcher's fielding or throwing by:

a. leaning over home plate
b. stepping out of the batter's box
c. making anyother movement wich hinders actions at home plat or the catcher's attempt to play on a runner
d. failing to make a reasonable effort to vacate a congested area when there is a throw to home plate and there is time to move away


You might have him on C. I would call it. Did this really come up in a game? That is quite the odd situation.

You're kidding, right?

I posed this situation to my non-umpire wife and she had the same response: "You're kidding, right?"

I bet there are coaches that would, with a straight face, want the run to count.

Toss 'em both for conduct unbecoming of my sanity.

Didn't you just call time to clean that plate? :)

Strange situation. Very strange indeed.

I'd consider the actions of the players in this instance:

You said that the batter always stays in the box for his "practice" swings when the catcher throws the ball back to the pitcher. If he always does that, the catcher should learn and know to avoid it. Hence, I would just laugh and stop any baserunners from advancing and put the ball in play when it got to the pitcher.

However, there was a runner on third. We all know that players need to be aware of game situations. If he's moving around in the box in an unreasonable manner (I'd consider most anything unreasonable until the ball left the catcher's hand), then I'd call him out for interference since we do know that there's a runner on third and his "practice" swings could certainly be considered interference due to the space they take and the way they move a batter around in the box, obscuring the catcher's ability to choose to go to the left or right of the batter should he try a pickoff.

In this situation I'd more than likely call the batter out if I felt the runner on third had a nice leadoff. Worse yet, it's possible to call the runner out for his actions, too, although sending him back to third would be the far better thing to do in such an odd situation.

But I think I'd have to see a play like this to make a good ruling.

So what did happen on this play? Or are you teasing us?

-Craig

This is what is known as "weak interference." The ball is dead and no runners may advance. Otherwise no harm, no foul.

Did this really happen?
 

In real life...

This did not happen exactly as described, but the batter did partially connect with the ball, which drove it strait down into the batter's box. No runners were on. The situation did get me thinking, though, and so I posed the question...what if???

Pesonally, I'd probably just kill the ball, and let no runners advance.