Batter Interference????

[Kaliix]

Most of this comes down to how you judge intent. In a situation where the batter walks, does the batter normally loft his bat towards their dugout and then proceed onto first base. In general, this is what happens. We see it all the time during a game when a walk is issued.

Now, if the batter received ball four and does what batters, in general, do, which is loft the bat towards the dugout and trot to first, there is no intent to interfere. The batter is just doing what he normally does.

WWTB, et. al., IMHO, don't like the fact that the offense is gaining an advantage by what happened, so they are claiming intent where there really isn't any. If there is "intent" to do something then the BR should be doing something different than he normally does to signify that intent.

Otherwise, the default is that it was accidental. As others have said on this board, sometimes train wrecks happen. In this case, even though it looks like something should be called, there is no intent, and it is just a train wreck or freak occurence where no one really did anything wrong, but someone or some team got the short end of the stick.

Just like we don't do make-up calls to right a bad call of our own, we don't judge intent out of nothing just because it looks like something should be called or some wrong should be righted. Sometimes sh!+ happens....

[Edited by Kaliix on Feb 2nd, 2006 at 10:24 AM]