INT on a foul ball

[UmpTTS43]

Originally Posted by mbcrowder

It was not my intent to put words in your mouth ... in fact I said "seem to be" indicating that I was not positive that was what you were saying. I've seen more angles than the OP (which means Original Post) shows, and it's clear they did not kill the play at all until MUCH later. The only real indication of this on the OP is U3 calling the out near 3rd base on the tag. It's obvious that no umpire emphatically killed this play as they should have. (It should have been killed at the point of Interference... but failing that, it should have been killed when the ball was touched foul - surely you can agree with AT LEAST that).

Yes, I will give you that in an ideal world. There was so much going on during this play with different judgements by different umpires concerning different aspects of the play that I see nothing wrong with letting it play out. You can always go back and make things right. Once you kill a play, it is difficult to correct things. Sometimes when crazy happens, you have to let crazy play out.

Sigh. I'll make this simple. Move the OP away from the foul line. Who is out on the IFF? Batter. Exactly what play, then, did the runner interfere with?

In most cases, the ball is live during an IFF where the batter is out. Since the ball is live, you can have a base runner interfere a fielder while making a play on the live ball. The INT call is based on a fielder making a play on a live ball versus whether any particular runner is out or not. If R2 was off on the pitch, the INT committed by R1 on F3 could have possibly prevented a secondary play on R2 even though BR was out on the IFF.

In short, just because BR is out for IFF does not mean that the INT call is off of the table.