contact at the plate - must slide?

[WestMichBlue]

Originally Posted by greymule

To me, a crash is an actual crash, not merely contact. Unfortunately, umpires differ greatly in how they call such plays.

I believe that ASA's crash rule was instituted in 1980 or 1981. I remember clearly that before the change, it was pretty much as in MLB, with runners feeling obliged to crash to break the ball loose, especially (obviously) at home.

Crash, smash, bump, collide, contact, run into - what difference does it matter? The rules only call the runner out if she stays on her feet and makes the above type of contact with a defender that has the ball and is attempting make a play on the runner. But if you judge the crash, smalsh, bump, collide, or contact to be flagrant (ASA) or malicious (NFHS) then you add an additional penalty of ejection.

You are right, the crash rule showed up in the early 80's. But have you read that old rule. It reads: "When a defensive player has the ball and is waiting for the runner and the runner remains on his feet and deliberately, with great force, crashes into the defensive player, the runner is to be decalared out. Deliberately? With great force? Then what the hell is flagrant? (which earned an ejection in '82) Still sounds like the old wild west days!

In '94 the words deliberately and with great force were finally removed. And the words "about to receive a thrown ball" added. That was the "crash" rule that you knew for the next ten years.

In 2004 ASA removed "about to receive" from its obstruction definition. But it failed to remove those words from the "crash" rule (8-8.Q). So for one year ASA umpires had the absurb situation where a fielder obstructed a runner, but if you had a "crash" (smash, bump, collide, contact) the runner could be called out for interference. In 2005 ASA innocuously slipped in the change by removing "about to receive" from 8-8.Q.

NFHS then made the same damn dumb mistake. They followed ASA and changed their obstruction rule in 2005, but failed to fix the "crash" rule (8-6.14). That was fixed in 2006.

Today, in both codes I think it is fair to state that if a runner stays on her feet and makes contact with a defender, then:

a) if the defender does not have the ball the call is obstruction,
b) if the defender has the ball the call is interference and runner is out,
c) in either case if the contact is judged to be flagrant or malicious, the runner is ejected.

Understand that in b) we are talking about the runner initiating the contact. If the defender has the ball and she initiates the contact attempting to tag the runner or get the out, then that contact is legal. If she hangs on to the balll, call the out. If she loses the ball, call safe.

WMB