Red Sox vs Devil Rays - 8/12/04

[Carl Childress]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Kaliix

Is it possible to have contact and no interference? Sure, it's possible and that is what in fact seemed to have happened on the play described in this thread.

Unfortunately, that would involve some sort of delayed interference/play-on-advantage theory type rule which is not yet a rule covering interference. That may be something that could be investigated as a rules change.

Originally posted by Jim Porter

So, then, you're saying the proper course of action is to call interference on mere contact whether or not it actually interfered with a fielder's attempt to field the ball? And you're saying that's clear and unambiguous? Show me.

Originally posted by Kaliix

Fair enough:

From the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, Second Edition:
Avoid v.t. 1. to keep away from; keep clear of.

The defintion of avoid, applied to our circumstance, means that the runner must keep clear of or away from the fielder. That would mean that by touching the fielder, the runner has failed to keep clear of or away from the fielder. If the runner did, then he could not have made contact with fielder.

Hence avoid means no contact. Therefore contact=interference.

Kill the play, enforce the penalty and in the case of the original play in this thread, keep the run from scoring.

I feel the whole "whether or not it actually interfered with a fielder's attempt to field the ball" argument is misleading. Interference is defined in numerous ways in the rules. Some of them may not involve plays in which the actions defined in the rules result in actual interference, meaning that they impacted and altered the play. But they are still interference and should still be called.

[/b]

No, that's not what Jim was saying. He was asking you to cite some section in the rule book that indicates in "clear and unambiguous" terms that "contact" is automatially "interference." A dictionary won't help.