Remain

[pollywolly60]

That has been precisely my ruling on the two occasions I have had this happen in the past (that I remember). The first was a 10U tournament, and the pitcher accidentally dropped the ball while she was standing on the pitching plate, before she had brought her hands together. I called nothing.

The next situation was just about a month ago in a 12U ASA National Qualifier. Had a pitcher who would (quite regularly) toss the ball up in the air and catch it with her bare hand while waiting for the batter to get her sign from her coach. All this was being done within the legal time frame, while she was standing on the pitcher's plate. I called nothing (even though I had a coach yelling from the dugout "Balk! That's a balk!"). I reasoned that because she had not yet brought her hands together, much less separated them, then this was a no call.

However, the rule cited above refers to preliminaries, for which an infraction would result in an IP call according to the book.