While I agree this isn't what I would have ruled in a game situation, it makes sense as the rule goes. The definition of a runner is a BR who reaches first base. The player is standing on the base. How do you "illegally" reach a base?

One problem with this ruling - how the heck do you explain it with any credibility on the field? It seems to me the explanation would sound like umpire BS to a coach.

I'm pretty sure I could sell the explanation I offered (can't appeal for missing the base she is standing on, coach).

A little different slant, but still...

12Us playing 14B in a local tournament. 11-4, nobody out, bottom of 3, winning team is (of course!) visitors, and it's a little more than a drizzle.

Ball hit back to pticher, she kicks it into foul territory on the first base side. Catcher is trailing the play, gets the ball, and throws to 1B for the out. Of course the runner goes to the orange and 1B goes to white. I say nothing except out.

After the half-inning, Mr. Preventative here gets the two coaches together and explains that in a perfect (dry) world (and one in which I hadn't just taken a Benadryl, which I found out I can not do with all these other meds), the runner coulda shoulda been safe and I can't coach your players BUT someone is gonna call that runner safe...or call that runner out...depending on the case, the mood of the umpire, and whether the moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars.

John, I'm not understanding why the runner should have been called safe. If the ball is coming from the foul side of first base the defense and the batter-runner may use either the white or colored portion of the base.

Yep, Ed's right.

Your explanation to the coaches was unnecessary and incorrect.

After further review, you're both right.

Damn...maybe all that Benadryl is still impacting me. When you wake up 8 hours later in the back parking lot of Fort Dent, and you're the only person there...it can be even scarier than my umpiring.

She did miss it, coach, but once she passed it, the entire bag becomes just one bag - for both her and your fielder. She returned to that bag before your fielder appealed the original miss.

I don't think that would be a hard sell at all - just like any other returning legally to a base before an appeal.

I don't think it is that hard a sell, either. Nothings perfect and just how many times do you get a players stopping dead on the base when a play is being made on them?

I was just envisioning explaining the difference between a batter-runner and a runner and the magic transformation that takes place in the vacinity of 1B. ;)

I agree with that - which is why I wouldn't even open that can of worms (batter-runner vs runner), but rather explain what changes after BR reaches the bag ("once she gets to first, coach, the base becomes one big bag", or something similar).

And if I'm the coach I would say she never passed the bag and she never returned. I don't believe you can use that argument to explain your ruling. Its also not the logic ASA is using. They are saying that when the batter-runner reaches first base, she is no longer a batter-runner but a runner and that the double bag no longer exists. Its one big bag. I believe that argument is easier to sell. Not my original position. I still think the runner should be called out. But I'm at the bottom of the food chain so what I think doesn't count. I'll call it like ASA wants it called.

Then say reached instead of passed ... and this IS what ASA is saying - once she reaches it, she's a runner, making the bag one big bag - I was just avoiding (as stated to Dakota) the whole runner vs batter-runner conversation with the coach and instead describing what changed when BR reached the bag.

No magical transformation, just tell him to look up the definitions of each in Rule 1 for BR & R which are on pages 53 & 59, respectively.

And if THAT doesn't work, just tell them that according to the latest manifestation of string theory, we are only living in a very narrow layer of what would be 11 universes, each probably no more than a nanomillimeter wide, and over in the next universe no one cares, so shut up and play ball.:eek:

Or tha galaxy in which we live could be nothing more than a mere speck under Donald Sutherland's finger nail.