Kevin Mench up to bat, ball four gets by the catcher, all the way to the wall. Mench slowly walks toward the bat boy to hand him the bat, coach is yelling at him to RUN. Mench finally seems to hear after about 6 very slow steps, just as he's gotten rid of the bat. Catcher is making absolutely no play on the ball.

UMPIRE HANDS THE CATCHER A NEW BALL!!!!

I couldn't believe what I just saw.

1) Why wouldn't the coach (at least the one that saw the passed ball) tell Mench to keep going? (After the ball came in play, he relaxed and was saying something jovial to his dugout). (Let's not even go down the road of Mench being a moron for not running when the ball got by).

2) What would have happened, had Mench started running to 2nd, after umpire threw in the new ball.

Sounds like a case of mistakefest. My guess is that if Mench had taken off it would have been up to the umpire to decide if he had a chance to make it to second. If so he would have had to correct his mistake. That reason is why we shouldn't be throwing balls around without calling time first. And we should all know time cannot be granted with the BR still on his way to first after a walk.