Batter throws bat

[Eastshire]

Originally Posted by jicecone

Not quite sure how the location of where the bat ends up, has anything to do with the determination of whether a bat was "carelessly" thrown or not. Why are we insistent on saying that things that are not specifically covered by the Rules, are therefore wrong or illegal. As officials we need to stick to enforcement of the rules as they exist and are interpreted. Making it up, just causes problems.

Eg: I am doing a game the other day and R3 is coming home and does not slide. The catcher is on 1B side of plate and receives a low throw from right side of field. Reaches over and tags R3 around the ankle, causing him to flip/trip over the catcher. Two players, playing within the rules and just not executing the plays normal with good baseball techniques. My partner ejects R3 for malicious contact. The coaches question the call. I am not asked to get involved and don't.

It is obvious that it looked malicious to my partner and he made the call but, I don't believe his interpretation of the rules were consistent with "malicious contact" and therefore because something unusual happened, he felt he had to react with a ruling, that I believe was incorrect.

Sometimes you just have to umpire.

Your partner was wrong. That has little bearing on what were are talking about here as far as I can tell.

Fed 3-3-1c says "A . . . player . . . shall not carelessly throw a bat." "Penalty: At the end of playing action, the umpire shall issue a warning to the coach of the team involved and the next offender on that team shall be ejected . . ."

So this is covered by the rules. If you're arguing that a player who, in an attempt to hit the ball, throws the bat all the way to the fence has thrown the bat in a careful manner, then we disagree on what is careless.

We are not given a definition for carelessly throwing the bat, so if you judge that not to be careless, you can't technically be wrong, but I'd question your judgement in the matter.