Catcher Batter Contact
 

Middle School game with FED rules. R3 with two outs and a 2-2 count on the batter and F1 throws a nasty hook that drops right off the table and bounces off of home plate into F2. Batter swings and misses and the ball is blocked directly up the first base line in the runners lane about 30ft from home. F2 immediately jumps up and takes off up the line in foul territory to get to the baseball. The BR takes off down the line to first base. F1 also begins to run towards the baseball. About 20ft up the line F2 and the BR make contact with each other and both fall to the ground. F1 picks up the baseball and reaches over and tags the BR who is laying on the ground.

I am the third base umpire so I was just playing spectator for the play. PU initially signals obstruction but then upon the BR being tagged by F1 he points to the first base umpire who signals out. At this point the plate umpire signals me and the other umpire in. He says that he originally had obstruction where contact occurred up the line but then thought it was incidental contact where it was F2 and the BR who collided. They both were doing as they were supposed to be doing and just so happened ran into each other. The first base umpire immediately agreed with him.

My understanding of the incidental contact ruling is that the contact has to occur within the vicinity of home plate. With the contact occurring up the line is it still incidental contact? If a call should have been made, would it have been OBS or INT? It really was a weird looking play with the two colliding the way they did.

Also for my own knowledge, what if it had been F1 and the BR who had collided? The way they were both running it seemed as if the contact between F2 and BR had not occurred F1 and BR would have hit.

This is probably a HTBT but opinions are appreciated.

You are correct that for contact to be nothing, it has to be in the vicinity of home plate. Given that this was a pitched ball (not batted,) I have a hard time envisioning anything but OBS in this situation, no matter with which fielder BR had contact.

I'm not sure FED even has the "in the vicinity of home plate" exception that OBR has.

The OP is OBS all the way.

30 feet up the line, I have OBS on the catcher also unless the BR was intentionally taking out the catcher. HTBT

Middle school game with 3 umpires? Wow. Was this the Mid-school World Series. Most Middle school games I ever worked were by myself. Interesting.

The way the play occurred was just weird. I was surprised that the ball bounced as far as it did but was more surprised the way the contact occurred. Nothing was malicious or intentional from my angle and my partners agreed which was why we ruled incidental contact. My initial thought was obstruction due to the play being so far up the line but I was not 100% sure which is why I was not adamant about calling it. My partners were pretty sure that it was nothing too so I did not want to differ without being 100% sure.

The game was not the world series (you would have thought it was though the way some of the fans were acting lol) but was part of the varsity tournament. This was 1 vs. 2 and the winner advanced to the championship game with the loser going to the losers bracket to fight their way into the championship game. Teams voted to use 2 umpires for 1st round and 2nd round games and the first set of losers bracket games . 3 umpires for 3rd round and last set of losers bracket games. 4 umpires for the championship game. All year long we have had 2 umpires on every game, including JV games. Life is good :)

FED 8-4-1a states the runner is out if he intentionally interferes with the catcher's attempt to field the ball after a third strike. I think that can be interpretted the same way as OBR does.

I have obstruction as described in the original post.

It does'nt have to be "malicious or intentional" for OBS to be called. At that part of the field, (30 ft.), the fielder without the ball cannot hinder the runner. Same as if F1, came running down the line to field the ball and accidentally crashed into the fielder and then picked it up and tagged him.