Award 1 or 2 Bases?

[bob jenkins]

Originally posted by aevans410
Intentional catch and carry is the closest rule "by the book" that you can cite. With intentional catch and carry, even though the idea behind it is different, the player exhibits control when he commits the infraction. The problem lies that the penalty from intentional catch and carry is 2 bases from TOP. R2 was at bat at TOP.

You have to award a base (or bases) here though, I agree there.

[Edited by aevans410 on May 11th, 2005 at 08:37 AM]

I think "intentional catch and carry" is a red-herring here. It was put in specifically to close a loop-hole in the FED rules.

Under FED rules, a runner cannot return to retouch a base left early on a fly ball when he is beyond the next base and the ball becomes dead.

So, intelligent F9, seeing R1 stealing on the pitch and passing second, catches the fly ball near the boundary line and intentionally steps out of play to "double up" R1. It's a lot safer than throwing the ball back to F3.

To stop this play, the FED put in the intentional catch-and-carry rule. And, because it was cheating, it needed to be a more severe penalty than the unintentional catch and carry (thus, the 2 bases instead of 1). And, since it's only on a fly ball , all runners would need to "tag up", so the award should be from TOP.

Of all the rules mentioned, I think this is the least likely to be used as a precedent.