Batter's Box Question

[ozzy6900]

Originally Posted by Fan10

Well, I'm just a fan, so I'm certainly no rules expert. In this case, I thought I knew the rule but wasn't sure. I do remember actually learning a rule from Joe Morgan a few years ago. In a Sunday night ESPN game, a batter who had a 2 strike count attempted to bunt and popped it up foul. My first thought was that it was an immediate dead ball and the batter was out since he bunted a ball foul with 2 strikes. However, on this play, the third baseman caught the ball. Morgan then explained how that was a bad play because it gave the runners the potential to tag up (even though they didn't). He explained that he should have let it drop to make sure that no runners advanced. That was new to me, and I discovered Morgan was correct.

So, some broadcasters do know what they're talking about. I think that most of them know a lot more about game strategy than they do about rules.

Joe Morgan is wrong 99.99% of the time on rules. This was the one time in a thousand he was correct.

As was stated before, Steve Palermo is the only "announcer" that knows what he is talking about when it comes to rules. Joe Morgan knows the game and situations but as a former player, Joe is weak on the rules and the concepts. Most of what you hear from announcers are the myths of baseball rules (hands are part of the bat, the runner gets the base he was going to +1, etc.) and because people (fans) think that these bozos know what they are talking about, the festering of myths continues.

If you really want to know rules, keep reading the umpire boards and download the MLB rules (PDF version) from MLB Downloadable Rules. Then when a weird play happens, you can tell your buddies what the real reason was that the umpires made that call.

Enjoy the game!