How would you rule on these plays.

cbfoulds · #25 (**permalink**) Wed Mar 16, 2005, 10:19am

Quote:

Originally posted by bob jenkins

Quote:

Originally posted by cbfoulds
OK, R didn't "run away", but I see nothing in 8-4-2b which, absent a slide, requires him to do anything other than avoiding "illegal contact" or "illegally alter(ing)" the fielder's actions. We know there was no contact at all in this [Sitch 3] play. Thus my question: what makes coming in upright, with no contact, "illegal", so as to invoke the penal strictures of the FPSR?

While there was no contact, F4 / F6 (whoever it was) was required to make "a great play avoiding physical contact". As I read the play, I'm envisioning that the runner is who caused this action, so I have the FPSR violation and the DP.

I'll start off with admiting that you [and gordon] are probably, almost certainly right: FPSR violation is how they want us to call this in FED [if being pegged by the ball can be a FPSR violation, this certainly can be]. So I'll start adjusting my thinking, in order to call this correctly if it happens in one of my games. I can see it being a hard sell to coaches.

However, I do think this is moving us very close to "must slide" [must evaporate, actually]; and makes the word "illegally", in "illegally alters ..." the fielder's play, redundant and meaningless. Under this interpretation, there is no such thing as "legal" alteration: the fielder's play was altered, therefore it was illegally altered - res ipsa loquitur. Unless, of course, R slides on the ground and in a direct line to, but not past, the base. Starting to sound an awful lot like a Forced-Slide Play Rule, now.