Base awards mandatory?

[DG]

Originally Posted by kopan99

9th inning; batter already has a single, double, and home run. He hits another over the fence but stops at third, so he can hit for the cycle. Is there a rule reference to make the runner advance to an awarded base (home) or a precedence for calling him out for refusing a base award?

I suppose he could walk off after touching 3b and be called out for abandonement, but don't know if that would be scored a triple. That would be a scoring question from a chapter I don't read much.

[Forest Ump]

It's a four base award. If he stopped at third I would treat it the same as a hit batsman. He doesn’t get to chose whether to go to a base or not. If he abandoned the bases, it would simply be an out. No base hit. Not a scoring expert but I think that's right.

7.05 Each runner including the batter-runner may, without liability to be put out, advance—
(a) To home base, scoring a run, if a fair ball goes out of the playing field in flight and he touched all bases legally; or if a fair ball which, in the umpire’s judgment, would have gone out of the playing field in flight, is deflected by the act of a fielder in throwing his glove, cap, or any article of his apparel;

[Rich Ives]

He'd get the triple.

[charliej47]

This has been gone over before and the consensus is that if he does not advance to the awarded base he has abandon it and will be called out. This occurred in a walk-off home run with two outs that was nullified because of this and they had to go into extra innings. I can not remember if it was FED or OBR rules that was used.