ASA SP batter catching a pitched ball

Originally posted by mcrowder
sj - in the situation described by the initial poster, the batter caught the ball. The ball never crossed the front of the plate. I suppose it's conceivable that the batter was set up VERY deep, and caught the ball very close to his body so that the ball barely crossed the front of the plate before it was caught. But surely this is picking nits.

You have a good point and I don't like picking nits either, but in the initial post nothing was said about the ball not crossing the plate. I guess I assumed the ball had crossed. The only time I have had this done the ball had crossed the front of the plate and was inside so I called a ball. We were not stealing at the time so no harm no foul. If the ball was touched before it past the plate I think you have just a dead ball. Runners can't leave base anyway so it would be like it touching the ground.

Your dialog leads me to believe that you are motivated to call an out for interference. Not sure I see why. This is relaxed action, and there was no play to be played on. Maybe catching the ball was stupid, and warrants a "Don't Do That", but I can't see why, in the spirit of the rule, any softball organization would want a batter called out for this.

No I'm not motivated to call the out. I would only call the batter out if it interfered with the catcher making a play on a runner.