Runner Interference on IFF Rule

[NYBAREF]

Here is the perspective of the umpire who actually made the call.

I was the 1B umpire.

The ball was fould. It landed in foul territory just between the 1st base coaches box and 1st Base. The runner interfered with the 1st baseman while trying to make the catch. He had a play.

I ruled interference and called the batter out. In hindsight, I should have called the runner out. Here was my logic at the time. Everytime that I had seen an interference on a foul ball the batter had been called out. However all those intereferences were caused by: batters, a base coach, dugout personnel or fans. I'd never seen a case where the runner causes interference on a foul ball. Also, everytime I've seend an interferenc by the runner, we've placed the batter on 1B. But that didn't seem logical since it was a foul ball.

I conferred with my partner and he agreed with the batter being out, so we went with it. Nobody protested, so we moved on.

So, had we called the proper call (runner out) what would we have done with B3? Add a strike and keep him at bat, or put him on 1B. I say add the strike and keep him at the plate.

It has made for some great discussion over the past few days. One thing that is for sure, I will always know how to handle this situation now.

As far as the IFF rule goes, obviously in this case it does not apply. But if the ball was ruled fair, I would have called a double-play. B3 out on Infield Fly Rule and R1 out was interfering with a field attempting to field a batted ball.



Scott
"It takes experience to avoid mistakes, it takes mistakes to gain experience."