obstruction question for 7-26

[Cecil4]

Referee magazine recently had a case play as follows.
Runner on 1st, line drive toward center.
R1 advances toward 2nd base without seeing the ball. F4 simulates fielding the ball, which causes R1 to slide into 2nd base.
The question posed was whether that simulation constituted a fake tag, which it does not.

My question is whether you would consider calling it obstruction,
not the fake tag variety; but hindering, impeding or confusing the runner.

[Tru_in_Blu]

I have never seen the situation played out in a game. I'd say I'm unlikely to call that as OBS.

If it were to be considered OBS, what do you think of a line drive just over the glove of a leaping infielder? Might that confuse a runner? She doesn't know if a catch would be made or not.

I've seen fake tags. These usually happen when baseball players who didn't make it to the show start playing wreck-ball. I will warn coach/player not to do it again. In most cases, the player was not aware of the rule.

On the flip side of the coin, I have called verbal INT when a player running behind F4 on a pop up, yelled out "I got it, I got it". If I recall, this was in a 12U game.

Speaking of 12U and OBS:
Runner on first and a ground ball hit to F4. She fields it cleanly and is directly in the runner's base path. She could have easily reached out to tag the runner, but instead chose to throw to F6 covering second base. After releasing the ball, she was clearly in the runner's path without the ball. OBS?