obstruction??

[Steven Tyler]

Originally Posted by thumpferee

Because the runner just happened to be in the one spot on the field where the klutzy catcher could run into him.

That sounds like an excuse I got years ago from an umpire on a WP/PB. R3 and the pitcher gets one to the backstop. My batter stepped out of the box so the pitcher/catcher could make a play at the plate. Ball is rolling around the backstop, and R3 scores. Pitcher is late covering, and wouldn't have been close to making a play anyway. The catcher in desperation just pitches the ball toward the home plate area, and hits my batter square in the back. Umpire calls batter interference.

I walked down to ask what the deal was. He replied, "The ball hit him." I said, "I know that, but what did he do to interfere?" We repeated the same question and answer a few times.

When I finally got tired of his little cat and mouse charade, I finally told him I needed more detail than that. That's when he got pithy, and forfeited the game to the other team, even without an ejection in all of this. BTW-I wasn't impolite, or making a scene.

There's more to the story afterward, but I don't want to write a novel. However, the way I read the OP, it appears to me that the catcher caused the collision, not the runner.

The moral to my story is: The catcher in my scenario just threw the ball, and not even in the direction to where it needed to go anyway. The batter did nothing to interfere. He just happened to be in a spot where the catcher could randomly throw the ball anywhere, and still the call was incorrect. The same goes for the OP. The runner was doing what he supposed to do at that moment and time.

I would call interference in the OP if the scored runner actually did anything that intentionally caused the interference. I just don't see this as your garden variety interference.