Please just stay off the field.

+100

Sorry for your loss. I'll try to remember.:p

Precisely this play happened in the Ray/Ranger game tonite. The ump had all but called it foul until he realized it had kicked up chalk.

So then, he didn't call it foul?

Because it kicked up chalk. An inch to the left and it would not have. I really doubt he would have "seen the shadow" and called it fair.

Boy Larry you really are reinventing umpiring as we know it with your every post.

I look forward to what obtuse and tangential wisdom you come up with next. Maybe it really would be best to join Twitter as another poster suggested. It would be great for all of us to get mobile updates on your umpire musings.

Please explain how my reasoning is obtuse or tangential. The puff of chalk is the only thing that allowed ULF to make the right call. What is rather obtuse and tangential is trying to parse what fraction of a baseball might be tangentially over the perpendicular plane of the foul line, absent the puff of chalk. Considering it is hard for a MLB PU to track the course of a dribbler 6 feet in front if him at T-Ball speed, I can't see how it is practical to try to call a tangential shadow on a ball going around 100 mph

Just googled "ball kicks up chalk" and came up with an old thread from this forum from July 2001. There was a side taken by Carl Childress and the other taken by Rich Ives. Nobody called Carl obtuse or tangential for making the same argument I did.
http://forum.officiating.com/basebal...fair-foul.html
QUOTE:
Originally posted by Rich Ives
If the last 1/4" of a fly ball hits the foul pole and the ball glances off the foul pole to the foul side, it's a home run isn't? Other than the distance travelled, what's the difference here?
Rich:
I am simply amazed at this discussion. Obviously, a ball that HITS the foul pole is a fair ball. (Duh!) A ball that hits a chalk line beyond the base is a fair ball. A ball that stops rolling in front of the base is a fair ball if it's touching the line.

But we're talking about a ball that "breaks the plane" of the foul line WITHOUT TOUCHING IT.

Blarson said that he's "always" called such a ball fair. In nearly 50 years of baseball, that's the most intriguing statement I've ever heard about the game, for in that time I have never seen a ball stop in such a position, and I have never spoken to any umpire who has. BLarson, the minor league umpire reported in Referee, and the originator of this thread stand alone in my experience.

Once we admit that a ball can be fair without touching the line because part of it sticks OVER the line, what will we say to the coach who claims that the batted ball broke the plane as it passed over third base? Remember, we're talking at most about a half inch viewed by an umpire from 90 feet away.

Fellows: We cannot begin to deal in microcentimeters. A ball that kicks up chalk is easy to call. Right? Even worse: Imagine how to explain to a defensive coach that a ball that passed to the left of the foul pole in left field is a fair ball, home run, because as it passed it broke the plane of the pole.

After reflection, I come to the conclusion this thread is a joke. Right? You're yanking my chain. Right?

__________________
Papa C
Editor-in-Chief
Officiating.com

So the umpire made the correct call, and you want to create a fantasy in which he doesn't? Wow.

Okay, I will. Carl has a lot of head-scratching opinions--often obtuse.

So if a batted ball strikes(or comes to rest) on level ground with the edge hanging over the foul line, yet not touching the foul line, you want that ball foul. Yet if a batted ball strikes (or comes to rest) on ground on un level ground (the foul portion is lower than the foul line) so that the same edge of the ball now touches the foul line, it now is a fair ball. Hmmm. Nope, cant justify it by rule, by any stretch.

I agree, a slowly hit or bunted ball that is allowed to come to rest in the hope that it might roll foul should be ruled fair if it overhangs the edge of the foul line. I think that is a much harder call on a line drive to the outfield if you can't see chalk or paint chips kick up. That is what seemed to make the LFU abort his foul call that he was just about to make.

Hardly a fantasy - the LFU came within a synapse firing of completing the foul call he started to make.

Probably because Carl knows what he is talking about, where as you, on the other hand ................