Obstruction

[MD Longhorn]

Originally Posted by Manny A

The DDB signal has the entire left arm parallel to the ground. I can't even begin to imagine how that is supposed to confuse players and coaches with the standard out mechanic.

The DDB signal is still used in softball. I had a situation earlier this season where, as PU, I saw R2 get obstructed by F5 on a two-out fly ball down the leftfield line. I put out my left hand (while holding my mask) to make the DDB Obstruction call. R2 saw it, and thought I was signalling foul, so she held up and started to go back to second base. The ball was fair, her base coach yelled for her to go home, and she got confused. She ended up going back to third base safely. I didn't award her home, which she might've attained if she would have continued.

Speaking softball ... you absolutely should have awarded her home. You just said why even - you thought she would have attained it had there been no obstruction. There is no requirement in ANY ruleset of either side ball that the runner must attempt to achieve the award base.

[Manny A]

Originally Posted by MD Longhorn

Speaking softball ... you absolutely should have awarded her home. You just said why even - you thought she would have attained it had there been no obstruction. There is no requirement in ANY ruleset of either side ball that the runner must attempt to achieve the award base.

I guess I wasn't clear. It wasn't the obstruction that prevented her from attaining home. It was the fact that she stopped running because she mistook my signal for a foul ball. If she had continued and not stopped because of my signal, I certainly would have awarded her home if she would have reached it minus the obstruction.

[RPatrino]

Originally Posted by Steven Tyler

What "dead ball signal" are you referring to?

Pardon my error, the delayed dead ball signal.

[bluehair]

Originally Posted by Manny A

The DDB signal has the entire left arm parallel to the ground. I can't even begin to imagine how that is supposed to confuse players and coaches with the standard out mechanic.

The DDB signal is still used in softball. I had a situation earlier this season where, as PU, I saw R2 get obstructed by F5 on a two-out fly ball down the leftfield line. I put out my left hand (while holding my mask) to make the DDB Obstruction call. R2 saw it, and thought I was signalling foul, so she held up and started to go back to second base. The ball was fair, her base coach yelled for her to go home, and she got confused. She ended up going back to third base safely. I didn't award her home, which she might've attained if she would have continued.

If you can't begin to imagine how a not perfect DDB mechanic might be confused with a not perfect out mechanic, then maybe you lack imagination. Here, I'll help you:
1) Pick any of the interference/obstruction threads from this site where a slight variation in the sitch reverses the call, then picture the umpire pointing (I've got something). One team thinks its interference (out) the other team thinks its obstruction and then the umpire raising his left arm/fist...possible confusion.
2) Pick any of the interference/obstruction threads from this site where a slight variation in the sitch reverses the call, then picture the umpire pointing (I've got something). One team thinks its interference (out) the other team thinks its obstruction and then the umpire gets excited and raises the wrong arm raising his right arm/fist...possible confusion...imagine that.

And then you give another example of how a DDB mechanic was confused with a foul mechanic. Even with your description, I can't begin to imagine how that happened.

I'm glad to see the Fed DDB mechanic gone.

[MD Longhorn]

Originally Posted by Manny A

I guess I wasn't clear. It wasn't the obstruction that prevented her from attaining home. It was the fact that she stopped running because she mistook my signal for a foul ball. If she had continued and not stopped because of my signal, I certainly would have awarded her home if she would have reached it minus the obstruction.

The stopping, the mistaking, etc all happened after the obstruction, right?

If you thought she would have achieved home had she run after seeing your signal, then I'm assuming you would have thought she would have achieved home had she run BEFORE seeing it.

Our duty as umpire is to decide, AT THE MOMENT OF OBS, where the runner would have gotten to. All of the stuff that happened after the OBS is irrelevant (not so in all baseball codes ... but you're not talking baseball). At the moment of OBS, would she have achieved home had the OBS not happened. From your description that she could have even if she'd headed home AFTER going the wrong way for a second, I'd say that's a resounding yes.

[Rich Ives]

Had there been no obstruction there would have been no signal.

If there was no signal she would not have been confused and stopped.

The stop was therefore because of the obstruction.

[Steven Tyler]

Originally Posted by Manny A

The DDB signal has the entire left arm parallel to the ground. I can't even begin to imagine how that is supposed to confuse players and coaches with the standard out mechanic.

The DDB signal is still used in softball. I had a situation earlier this season where, as PU, I saw R2 get obstructed by F5 on a two-out fly ball down the leftfield line. I put out my left hand (while holding my mask) to make the DDB Obstruction call. R2 saw it, and thought I was signalling foul, so she held up and started to go back to second base. The ball was fair, her base coach yelled for her to go home, and she got confused. She ended up going back to third base safely. I didn't award her home, which she might've attained if she would have continued.

Run until you hear the word:FOUL!!!!

[Manny A]

Originally Posted by bluehair

If you can't begin to imagine how a not perfect DDB mechanic might be confused with a not perfect out mechanic...

Oh, well, if you're going to change things up significantly by stating the mechanics are "not perfect", or the umpire gets confused and raises the wrong hand, then everything goes out the window. Using that logic, we could argue that the "flying Safe" that some umpires tend to use looks too much like a Time/Foul mechanic, so we should change the Safe mechanic so that it looks like a self-hug.

If the mechanics are done properly, however, I still don't see how they can be confused. One has the entire left arm completely horizontal. The other has the right arm bent at a 90-degree angle. Shame on the players and coaches that can't figure out the difference. Besides, it's not our job to ensure our properly-executed signals don't confuse players and coaches.

Originally Posted by bluehair

And then you give another example of how a DDB mechanic was confused with a foul mechanic.

And I did that to provide a better example of why someone could argue why FED probably did away with the old DDB mechanic.

My guess, however, as to why FED got rid of it is so that baseball umpires are consistent in all codes.

[CT1]

Originally Posted by MD Longhorn

Our duty as umpire is to decide, AT THE MOMENT OF OBS, where the runner would have gotten to.

Want to rethink that one, Mike?

[MD Longhorn]

Originally Posted by CT1

Want to rethink that one, Mike?

No, I really don't. To what do you refer?

[CT1]

Originally Posted by MD Longhorn

No, I really don't. To what do you refer?

Our duty as umpire is to nullify the act of obstruction. We can't always do that as soon as the OBS occurs.

PLAY: R2 is obstructed by F6 between 2nd and 3rd on a base hit by B2. He is then thrown out at the plate:
(a) by 10 feet
(b) on a close play

We can't know at the moment of obstruction what our award will be -- 3rd or home.

[MD Longhorn]

Originally Posted by CT1

Our duty as umpire is to nullify the act of obstruction. We can't always do that as soon as the OBS occurs.

PLAY: R2 is obstructed by F6 between 2nd and 3rd on a base hit by B2. He is then thrown out at the plate:
(a) by 10 feet
(b) on a close play

We can't know at the moment of obstruction what our award will be -- 3rd or home.

This is incorrect. Baseball does teach that we should use post-obstruction evidence in determining an award. Softball does not.

[CT1]

Originally Posted by MD Longhorn

This is incorrect. Baseball does teach that we should use post-obstruction evidence in determining an award. Softball does not.

Sorry -- I didn't realize we had morphed into a softball discussion.

Just out of curiosity, what is the rationale for making an immediate decision in softball as opposed to baseball? Is OBS an immediate dead ball?

[MD Longhorn]

Originally Posted by CT1

Sorry -- I didn't realize we had morphed into a softball discussion.

Just out of curiosity, what is the rationale for making an immediate decision in softball as opposed to baseball? Is OBS an immediate dead ball?

No ... but I would actually ask this question the other way around.

Here's why... once a runner has been obstructed, every action taken by every player on the field (runners and fielders) is possibly altered from what it would have been had the obstruction not occurred.

I often hear an umpire (you implied this) say, "he was obstructed by about a step or two, the throw beat him by less than that, so he surely would have scored without the OBS." But this completely ignores the thrower - who threw the ball with a certain amount of speed after seeing where the runner he was throwing out was. Fielders don't throw every ball as hard as they possibly can. If the runner would have been 2 steps further along the path, would they have thrown the ball harder to try to make the play?

The same concept works the other way around as well. The runner is thrown out by 3 steps after an OBS that you think was "worth" about 2. But, if the runner was two steps closer and the fielder had to hurry the throw more, would it have been as accurate?

There's simply no way to calculate every single decision and what would have been different from what actually played out. MUCH more accurate to see the positions of the ball, fielder, and runner and decide right then... "absent that obstruction, the runner would have gotten to third".

[CT1]

Originally Posted by MD Longhorn

There's simply no way to calculate every single decision and what would have been different from what actually played out. MUCH more accurate to see the positions of the ball, fielder, and runner and decide right then... "absent that obstruction, the runner would have gotten to third".

Well ... we can't know for sure what would have happened. But, in baseball, we're instructed to use our experience, common sense and judgment to award bases.