appeal after overthrow

[Richard_Siegel]

Appeal plays come in two flavors. They are "relaxed" and "unrelaxed" appeals. Often the unrelaxed appeal is called a "continuous action appeal." That means that playing action has not ended yet on the play. Relaxed appeals happen after the the ball has been dead and when the pitcher has the ball and the umpire says, "play." Also, relaxed appeals happen after all playing action has ended, runners are stopped on their bases.

The rule that says the opportunity to appeal is lost of the defense errs upon making the appeal i.e. throws the ball out of play, only applies to the relaxed appeal. If an attempt to retire a runner on an appeal that he left his base too soon before a fly ball was touched, as in this OP, results in the ball being thrown out of play, the defense does not lose the right to make that appeal again once the ball has been made live.

However, in the original post, R1 was on 2B when the ball went OOP. That means he does not have the right to return to 1B to correct his baserunning infraction (left his base too soon before a fly ball was touched.) We do not call him out. We allow him to go back to retouch 1B if he wants to. We award him HP if we judge he was at 2B at the TOT, or 3B if he was not at 2B yet at the TOT. If the defense is smart enough, and they know the rules, even if R1 went back to 1B to retouch the base, they could appeal that he left 1B too soon and R1 would be declared out. His retouch of 1B means nothing if he was already on or beyond 2B when the ball went OOP.