Interference call

[Dakota]

This happened at a tournament I was at on Sunday (yesterday). I did not witness it, but had it described by a rules-challenged fan of the team that had the call go against them, so ...

Bases loaded. BR hits the ball. R1 coming home; throw is to home to retire R1 on the force. F2 standing between home plate at R1. F2 gains possession just before R1 arrives. R1 does not slide. R1 is tagged out, but gets tangled up with F2 as F2 is attempting to throw to somewhere to retire another runner. No malicious contact.

PU calls R1 out on the tag. Kills the ball, rules interference, calls R2 out.

Now, that's all I have on the situation. Tournament UIC got involved in the resulting ruckus and backed up the on-field call, but I did not discuss the situation with the UIC (or anyone else ). I only have the fan's description. (Obviously, I did not engage the discussion with the fan. I describe the fan as rules-challenged due to another comment or two I overheard - not about this play.)

Comments?

[WestMichBlue]

Originally Posted by Dakota

Bases loaded. BR hits the ball. R1 coming home; throw is to home to retire R1 on the force. F2 standing between home plate at R1. F2 gains possession just before R1 arrives. R1 does not slide. R1 is tagged out, but gets tangled up with F2 as F2 is attempting to throw to somewhere to retire another runner. No malicious contact.

PU calls R1 out on the tag. Kills the ball, rules interference, calls R2 out.

Comments?

Contact initiated by defense to make the tag; contact legal.

Retired runner interferres with defender trying to make a play on another runner. Interference must be intentional.

From your description - not intentional, therefore no interference. Bad call on part of umpire.

WMB

[mcrowder]

The whole thing hinges on intent. Since you have only hearsay from an obviously biased source, we don't know what the umpire really saw, so I'm not going to say this was a bad call. All that matters here is whether the umpire in question felt that R1 stayed standing in order to prevent a double play. If HE felt that was the case, then he made the right call.

[Andy]

To sum up the previous two responses.......HTBT!