FED 2002 Baseball Casebook

[greymule]

Papa C, you say, "When a runner leaves too soon, he is off with the pitch." Of course, he COULD be off with the pitch, and maybe everybody in the park knows he has to get back. But it's also leaving too soon if he goes back to tag at 1st and then leaves a split second before the catch, and maybe with everybody watching the center fielder, the ump is the only one who sees the infraction. Teams often neglect to appeal when the ump would have called an out. Do the rules differentiate between an obvious leaving too soon and a non-obvious one?

Should we all chip in and pay to have Kennedy, Breyer, Thomas, Scalia, Rehnquist, Souter, Ginsburg, Stevens, and O'Connor weigh in? I would predict another 5-4 ruling.