What's the call?

[BoomerSooner]

Originally Posted by Dakota

OK, got it. But you are not really disputing what has been discussed earlier in this thread, since the fielder in the OP was not 45 feet away. ASA, in fact, caused a number of coaches (and perhaps others) to want obstruction called every time the catcher blocked home, even when the closest runner was just rounding 3rd base. The confusion was caused by their (ASA's) re-writing of the RS dealing with obstruction after they took "about to receive" out of the rule.

Your earlier posts made it seem like you were looking for reasons to not call obstruction because you couldn't be sure why the runner altered her path.

If there was confusion because someone thought I was disputing the comments from previous posts, I'm sorry.

On the field, I never look for a reason to not call obstruction. If it is obstruction, I call it as such and I don't sit there and think that might not have been obstruction because of xyz reason. My point is that I don't consider a runner altering her path because of her perception that she might be obstructed by a fielder to be the basis for my decision. I realize I've used extreme examples in some of my cases, but my experience is that whether we're talking about obstruction or interference, there are many times a runner and fielder come much closer to each other than my examples, and I don't call anything just because one player reacted to the presence of the other.