Collision at Home Plate

[jdmara]

Originally Posted by UmpJM (nee CoachJM)

Josh,

What do you think is illegal about the slide?

An illegal slide is not, per se, malicious contact.

JM

I agree that an illegal slide is not necessary malicious contact, I do agree with that statement. It's not an automatic.

He is what I see on this play. Catcher who is on one knee receives the ball prior to the arrival of the runner at home plate. The runner initiates contact with a leading shoulder into the upper chest/shoulder/head region of the catcher. It must be noted that the catchers (left) knee is on the 3rd baseline.

In Iowa, it has been a huge emphasis over the years to cut out malicious contact and penalize it justly. The umpires have been instructed, as well as the coaches, that if there is an imminent out the runner has a few options and going through someone is not one of them.

Logical or not, this is how I look at this play. If the runner were to slide feet first, the slide would be illegal if the runner's raised leg is higher than the fielder's knee when the fielder is in a standing position (2-32-2b). In the OP, the runner did "slide", I think we can all agree on that. IMO, the contact was clearly made above the line higher than the fielder's knee when the fielder is in a standing position. That makes me question the intent of the running and the legality of the slide. Seeing that the runner led with his shoulder I have malicious contact. I wouldn't think twice about it.

-Josh

[MD Longhorn]

I don't. Agree that is. He's clearly trying to dive around the catcher and the catcher moves into his path. Pause it (admittedly difficult on this interface)... you'll see that catcher is inside WITHOUT the ball when runner, on the outside initiates the diving part of the play. He's already on his way down when catcher catches the ball. Not sure how we could expect an airborne player who was diving into an unoccupied space to somehow change direction when the space becomes occupied.

[txump81]

It's easy to analyze after the fact when you can pause and rerun in slo-mo. This gets really close to becoming an announcer.

Just kidding. At least we know the rules...

My very first thought was $-!+ happens. It looked to me like the collision wasn't that bad and maybe the catcher was faking. It looked like the runner tried to avoid contact. After watching it multiple times, I can see the catcher lunging into it ever so slightly. My ruling---Play on. Runner is out on tag.