Malicious contact or nothing?

[MD Longhorn]

Originally Posted by mbyron

It might be clear, but it's not in the rule book.

No runner has the right to run over a fielder, with or without the ball. I don't need to judge whether he's trying to dislodge the ball to call that MC.

Right, but that's not what he said. If you do judge he was trying to dislodge the ball, you should call MC, but you don't have to have an attempt to dislodge for it to be MC.

Runners don't have the right to run over a fielder, but just running over the fielder is not MC. Malicious contact requires Malice (hence the word). This means intent. Even a very hard very messy collision might not be MC if you don't see intent.