Batter's Box Help
 

Should the PU inform a batter that he is on the line of the batter's box prior to the pitch?

No.

However, if he takes an illegal position, the umpire should instruct him to take a legal position.

JM

On the line is considered a legal starting position. In your situation, the batter is doing nothing wrong. As JM said, if he were in an illegal position, you should have him move. If you notice an illegal starting position, allow the pitcher to pitch, and the batter hits the ball, and then you call him out for being out of the box, you have opened a nasty can of worms for yourself.

As for the back of the batters box, generally you will let them get away with it (in reason) unless the other team says something about it, at which point you will enfore it strictly for both teams.

NJ, is that the question you wanted to ask? I'm stumped as to why you would want to tell the batter he is on the line? Did you mean do you "tell the batter they are not in the box"?

If your question is correct, the answer is no.

Spoken like an honor grad! Congratulations.

Haha thanks Garth.

I hope everyone here knows that there's a huge difference between an improper starting position, and calling a batter out for an illegally batted ball. HUGE, and different in many rule sets.

If a batter is outside box before the pitch, I'll move them in, especially if they're crowding the plate, and blocking my view. I'll enforce the back line if someone is beefing about it. But if a foot is entirely out to the box to start with, or touching the plate for some rule sets, I'd hope we'd all catch that.

Bob, I know that on (the line) is in and that's the question I wanted to ask. Our association seems to push preventative umpiring (I know others do not). I wanted to see if this fell under preventative umpiring. Thank you.

Yes this would definitely fall under the preventative category.

And Kyle is correct, while having only part of your foot out of the box is an illegal starting position, as long as part of your foot is in the box when you make contact with the ball, you're ok (pro interpretation at least, not positive if it differs in high school).

It is the same in HS. The only difference would be the foot touching the plate, which is open to interpretation. OBR says that the entire foot has to be out of the box - so you could be touching the plate with your toes/ball of the foot and have your heel in the box (legal). FED says you're out for touching the plate. Open to interp as to completely out or stricly "just touching the plate." In a FED game though, I do call it "by the book" if I see it (but I'd have to have more than the toe just touching the black).

To answer with the OP - no I wouldn't tell them they are on the line. I would tell them if they are out of the box (rather "not in a legal position").

Um, the black isn't part of the plate, so I'd hope you'd never call that.

It's not really open to interp. In FED and NCAA either being completely out of the box OR touching the plate results in an illegally batted ball.

That's the way I read it. I have heard discussion on it (mainly from people that only call OBR).

I agree with your comment completely.