My answer: POTEDO #2

[Carl Childress]

POTEOD #2

Bootnose Hofmann is catching and there's a play at the plate. The runner slides around Hoffman's tag, but also misses the plate. Hoffman doesn't notice the runner missed home. When the runner reaches the dugout, the first baseman yells to Hofmann that the runner missed home. Hofmann runs into the dugout and begins tagging everybody in sight, but the runner sneaks out of the end
of the dugout before he is tagged and bolts back toward home plate. Hofmann throws the ball to pitcher Coonskin Davis, who is now covering and the runner beats the throw. Is the runner safe and do you score the run, or is he out when the team on the field begins the appeal process while he has already retired to the dugout? It's your call."

Answer:

What I confess here is one of my most embarrassing moments as a rules “expert.” The play above appeared in It’s Your Call, written by the editorial staff of Baseball America, published by Collier Books (Macmillan) in 1989. The consulting editor was Harry Wendelstedt.

What is embarrassing is this comment from the answer: “Going into the dugout does not affect the status of the runner – except after a dropped third strike (Rule 6.09b). This is not abandoning his effort to run – that only occurs between bases.”

Like the others on eteamz, when Cris Jones offered his official interpretation that the runner may return from the dugout, I was shocked: I had argued he could not. But I knew better.

At least in my subconscious I knew better. So, eleven years before Cris's “controversial” ruling, Harry Wendlestedt and the editors at Baseball American had already told us the
answer.

There’s not much to this play on the NCAA/OBR level then: The runner beat the throw back to the plate. Score the run.

On the other hand, in FED play as soon as the umpire determined that the runner would not return immediately, he would call time and declare him out.

There is something to be said for that, anyway.

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Papa C
Editor, eUmpire

[This message has been edited by Carl Childress (edited August 26, 2000).]