Base awards mandatory?
 

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.

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;

He'd get the triple.

:eek: 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.:D

It would probably have to be an appeal play by the defense, that he missed the plate. Is there such a thing as a fourth world play?

Can you imagine that happening in an MLB game? First, the gall to be so selfish to get the cycle, and not have your team get another run. You KNOW the next guy up, if it's not a close game, is going to wear one.

I once saw Hector Lopez hit a walk-off "ground rule" double. He touched 1B and went directly to the dugout. He was credited with a single.

I met him once many years later and forgot to ask him whether he remembered it.

He probably only would have been credited with a single anyhow:

10.06

(f) Subject to the provisions of Rule 10.06(g), when a batter ends a game with a safe hit that drives in as many runs as are necessary to put his team in the lead, the official scorer shall credit such batter with only as many bases on his hit as are advanced by the runner who scores the winning run, and then only if the batter runs out his hit for as many bases as are advanced by the runner who scores the winning run.

Rule 10.06(f) Comment: The official scorer shall apply this rule even when the batter is theoretically entitled to more bases because of being awarded an “automatic” extra-base hit under various provisions of Rules 6.09 and 7.05.

The official scorer shall credit the batter with a base touched in the natural course of play, even if the winning run has scored moments before on the same play. For example, the score is tied in the bottom of the ninth inning with a runner on second base and the batter hits a ball to the outfield that falls for a base hit. The runner scores after the batter has touched first base and continued on to second base but shortly before the batter-runner reaches second base. If the batter-runner reaches second base, the official scorer shall credit the batter with a two-base hit.

Yes, just as you count no more than the winning run if a throw goes into DBT. I should have mentioned that on Lopez's hit, the winning run scored from 2B, so Hector did cost himself a double.