Catcher's Obstruction on backswing

[Shmuelg]

Very interesting. A similar call happened to me about a month ago. The batter was taking his "warm-up" swings, and on the last one, the bat touched the catcher's glove. The pitch came in, he swung and missed. The bat did NOT hit the glove during this swing. I looked at the situation for a few milliseconds, then called "strike".

The reason I did this was that I didn't think the glove hit the bat while the batter was in the process of swinging at the ball. The batter was livid, but because most of the teams and players in our leage (Israel Softball Association) are pretty calm, and there are at least two umps on each team, no too many fireworks were lit up, if you know what I mean.