That is not a judgment call; it is a misapplication of the rule. USA 8.2-F(4): The batter-runner is out when the batter-runner interferes by making contact with a fair batted ball before reaching first base.

Calling this a foul ball is inviting a protest. A ball that stops (settles) over fair territory is, by definition, fair. Any contact with the ball by the BR is an out, batter's boxes or not.

The definition of a foul ball (subsection F) requires that the batted ball touches the batter or the bat a second time. A stationary ball can't make contact with anything. As has been posted previously, the judgment on this play is did the ball hit the player (ball>>>player) or did the player hit the ball (player>>>ball). Other sports have the word "impetus" in their rulebook verbiage. That concept applies here as well, just as it does in a batted ball being hit a second time.

If I judge the stationary ball to be foul before it is touched then it is foul.
Then again usually things happen so fast that it is hardly ever a stationary ball that is struck by the batter but is a bang-bang situation.
In any case calling a ball foul is something that cannot be protested

Using the word judgement in your ruling is not a get out of jail free card. Pure judgement on a call cannot be protested, but when a misapplication of a rule led to the judgement call it most certainly can be protested.

Let's reduce the judgement factor (which I think is a cop-out to not have to enforce this rule)

Let's say the situation where, like above, the ball goes straight down, and dies in the soft powder, up inside the BB (fair territory). Batter and F2 stand there (they're young, think its foul). You look down, see it's plainly up in the fair corner of the BB. Coach yells "Run!", and she kicks it on the way out.

What's your call gonna be?

It depends.
It would have to be well up in the box for me to deem it a fair ball and if so I would call her out.
But in 15 years of umpiring that has never happened.
What I am referring to is a bang bang contact--batter hits ball, ball then hits batter--or batter runs into the ball - as she is starting to first but has not yet left the box.
In this situation--which has occurred to me dozens of times --I am not going to take a mental yardstick and decide if the ball was in the fair or foul side of the box.
I am killing the action and calling it foul.
This is how I was taught and some of my clinicians have been Major and Minor league umpires--one of whom was Justin Klemm.
And unless softball is radically different in this rule from baseball---which I doubt--then I will stick with their advice.

Horsecrap.
A ball can be fair by 6 feet but if the umpire calls it foul then it is foul.
And if I say the ball was on the foul part of the box then good luck protesting that.

Dead ball; batter-runner is out; all runners return AND the only thing it depends upon is my observation that the ball was in fair territory.

So you would lie to sell a call?

Now, THAT is horseshit! The box is irrelevant to fair or foul, so where it is in the box means absolutely nothing.

So basically you are the umpire I encountered on Saturday. You know the rule, but you've decided to call that a foul for the rest of your career? That's basically what you're saying.

If there is immediate contact with batter and ball in the box then yes, I am calling it foul.
In 15 years this has never been an issue.
End of discussion.

This forum prides itself on civility, politeness, courtesy and respect for each other. :(

Ok, in this case, it is a foul ball in softball and baseball. Even if you see that the batter's front foot is at the top of the box, clearly in fair territory, there are rules that essentially state that a batted ball that hits the batter while the batter is in the batter's box is foul. In USA Softball, that's under rule 7-4-J. I'm not going to search other rule sets for similar rulings since the OP is USA Softball.

Now you have an entirely different situation, which is the case of the batter-runner contacting a live ball as he/she starts running to first base. That's usually something that happens after the ball has bounced on the ground or the plate, or is still in flight but hasn't directly hit the batter. That's not covered under rule 7-4-J; rather, as others have pointed out, it's covered under rule 8-2-F4 if the ball is fair when the batter-runner contacts it. Under this circumstance, you MUST decide if the ball was fair or foul. It's not an automatic just because the batter-runner was in the box when he/she made contact with the ball.


And that's where you're flat-out wrong. You MUST judge where the ball was located when the batter-runner contact it. Yes, if you judge that the ball itself was in foul territory when the batter-runner made contact with it, there's really nothing a coach can do to dispute that call. But if you say the ball was foul because the batter-runner was in the box when he/she contacted the ball, then you have opened yourself up to a protest due to a misinterpretation of the rule. There is nothing in 8-2-F4 that provides protection to the batter-runner just because he/she is still in the box. The box isn't even mentioned in that rule.

You need to understand the difference between the two scenarios, because they are fundamentally different.