The unavoidable train wreck was not one of the options. The choices in play 1 were to avoid the train wreck (as done in this play) or participate in the train wreck.

There are certain things that are unquestionably unprofessional as a plate umpire, like wearing your cap backwards or having any of your equipment on the outside of your apparel.

You consider having one ball bag unprofessional? To me, that's just a matter of taste and necessity.

Hell, in HS baseball around here - it would be pointless to saddle yourself with two ball bags. Just how many baseballs are you dealing with in your area? I'm lucky if I have as many as three balls in my bag at any one time. And usually, that only lasts until the first foul ball. Much more frequently it is 2 or less. Often, I have to wave my bag limply and say, "We're out of baseballs here, coach!" I can't imagine what I'd do with another bag flapping around.

That was the players choice. Once made, then it was the umpires choice in determining what if any, rule violation might have occured and if so penalize accordingly or not, and make the call.

I never said he was "unprofessional". Perception is what we are talking about here. I also said IMOP.

True and then there are times when some need to simply the complicated to make life easier. If you want to play simplifed gotcha games. I'm not interested in playing.

You ask if F2 can initiate something that didn't happen...well something sure happened on that play. And nothing would have happened if F2 hadn't moved.
I think you just said what I said in post #53 (though much more concisely).

the runner needs to ATTEMPT (does not need to be successful) to LEGALLY AVOID (diving is not legal) the collision.

If the runner dove to avoid the collision, you should thank him for his sporting play and then call him out.

I never said (nor thought) the catcher's glove made any contact with anything ... it's pretty apparent it did not. There is more to the catcher than his glove. It appears pretty obvious that there was SOME contact between the catcher's head/shoulders and the runner's upper legs.

If you judged that he dove over the fielder, then contact avoidance is a moot point, runner is out. Another umpire might judge that he avoided contact and that action was not a D/J/H.

Fed makes distinctions in 8-4-2b. It is not an out if player is lying on the ground or runner D/J/H over an outstretched arm (8.2.1D). That case play still baffles me (can't envision it), but it seems to suggest that the D/J/H has to be directly over the fielder. When F2 is moving/diving/falling, a D/J/H directly over that fielder is not a simple judgement to make...and requires one to umpire.

R3 was already airborne if/when he contacted F2's head/shoulder. If there was no contact with the mitt, then R3 chose to dive over the fielder and he's out. Otherwise, he's out on the tag.

I'm glad that some of you are so perfect that based on a horribly fuzzy video and 6 snapshots you can definitively tell that the umpire, who was 15 feet away and in a better position to see this, was wrong. I applaud you in your ability to determine what happened to 100% certainty.

You guys should coach.

Not exactly true. You can Jump or Hurdle (J/H) a fielder on the ground, or over his arm.

You can NEVER Dive (D) over the fielder.

Well that's not exactly right either. You can J/H over a fielder lying on the ground (prone and supine...re-learned that vocabulary on another board) :) 8.4.2A

But this still leave to the umpire whether the runner D/J/H and whether he did so "over" the fielder. I think I know the purpose of 8-4-2 and support its presents and enforcement, but not its OO (ab)use.

First, it's clearly a dive. We could look up the definition and post it, but I think we are grown ups. Like I stated before, it does leave it up to the umpire's judgement whether the fielder dove 'over' the fielder or not. My opinion, from the not as grainy as has been made out to be video and the very clear pictures, one from the opposite angle, is that the runner dove over the player. So, regardless of why, I think the runner should have been called out. Everybody misses stuff on the field at some point.

Is it wrong to point this out and try to decide what could have been done differently, so we can learn and be ready if it happens to us?

i. e. bluehair