ASA Mandatory Slide
 

Is there a mandatory ASA fast-pitch "must-slide" rule for a runner coming home (or any other base)? If not, are local jurisdictions allowed to add a mandatory "must-slide" rule?

No, and yes.

If a local jurisdiction, (or any jurisdiction) mandates a "must slide" rule, they are asking for trouble. Sliding can result in injuries. If a runner was following a mandated rule to slide and was thusly injured, (and I've seen broken legs, ankles, and one foot almost completely torn off!) the league or jurisdiction could be liable for the injury.

The ruling is that a runner cannot crash into a fielder who has the ball waiting to apply a tag. The ASA interp is that a runner MAY slide, jump over, go around, or return to the previous base (home excluded), when a fielder is attempting to tag. This however will not give the right for a runner to deliberately crash into one who does not have the ball.

If you have access to an ASA rule book, read POE 14.

No doubt, do not add "must" to slide. If your park district wants to make it avoid any contact fine but always leave it up to the player to decide how to avoid a collision. I always said in my pregames to remind your players that all hitting should be below the belt, slide, give yourself up, go around but if I get torso to torso I've got a judgement call to make.

Inevitably every year I'd hear "but if he's in the way without the ball...." my reply "you still have to go around and I'll stick out my left arm for you but if you crash into him then I'll be using my right arm and probably doing some pointing, as in where the exit is".

Last night with NO play at the plate the defensive captain runs on to the field telling me the runner must slide at home (the ball was at third). I tell him, there's no such rule. He loudly yells "Tha's Bull****!" He went to the parking lot.

Did you tell him he had to slide when he got to his HOME?

Contact by a runner against a defender that does not have the ball is obstruction (NFHS).

If the contact is malicious, then malicious contact overrides obstruction and runner is called out and ejected. ONLY if malicious. Contact may be violent; someone may get injured. But that itself is not necessarily malicious. You need to see a deliberate action on the part of the runner to injure or create a violent collision.

WMB

I thought the definition of malicious in the rule books as opposed to the dictionary is forceful, not about intent.