Cute situation from another board

[BretMan]

This play is really making the rounds! I have seen five different variations of this scenario on five different discussion boards in the past week.

An interesting non-softball footnote: This same question came up a few days ago on the webpage run by my local baseball umpire association. They have a "Stump the Ump" board where members can submit questions to our associations rule interpretor.

Our interpretor admitted that he was stumped! The question was forwarded to Kyle McNeely on the NFHS national rules committee for clarification.

The word we got was that on a ball that becomes foul, the passing runner is not out.

Now, from a softball point of view: I would also tend to say that the runner is not out.

I would base this on NFHS rule 8-5-1 and ASA rule 8-6-A, both of which state that runners must return to their base when a batted ball is foul.

Kind of hard to comply with that rule if you've declared the runner out!

Since the ball has been declared foul, no advance of the runners is possible. If no advance is possible, how can we call a runner out for advancing illegally?