Stealing home

[UmpJM]

Originally Posted by Rich Ives

He said where the catcher caught the ball:

catcher reaches forward and catches the ball before it crosses the home plate.

If it's OBR I have CI, and a balk. Batter to 1B, run scores. 7.07.

Rich,

"...before it crosses the home plate..." could mean a number of different things in my imagination - and there is no rule that explicitly prohibits it. I believe if you look at the text of 7.07 it explicitly prohibits "...stepping on or in front of the plate...". Which is a materially different thing from catching the pitch before it has crossed the plate.

In the real world, an umpire would have to be insane to call a 7.07 violation on a steal of home where the batter never initiated an offer and the catcher caught the pitch over the back third of home and still failed to prevent the score.

That's not the rule and not what it's for.

JM