Personal foul - late hit
 

Fall ball, 16U. ASA rules.

R1 on 3B. Wild pitch, runner coming home. F1 is asleep and stays in the circle, so no one is covering the plate. R1 slides in safe. F2 makes a late attempt to tag the runner, but instead just kind of clumsily dives into her. Runner was already safe before F2 began her dive/tag. Nice little crash, with F2 tumbling on top of R1 and the two of them rolling in a tangle a couple of feet.

Since it was not "malicious" (i.e. no intent to injure, etc.), all I did was advise the catcher to not do that again.

Comments?

Not any that I can think of.

I certainly am enjoying my Zaxby's Grilled House Salad w/ Blue Cheese dressing...


Oh, you meant comments about your little situation! Gotcha! ;)

In reading between the lines, I'm making an assumption that it probably looked pretty bad.

You did say that in your judgement, there was nothing malicious. You have already made or signaled a safe call, so the tag attempt and ensuing entanglement is really nothing.

I don't see a need for any instruction to the catcher at all. If one of the coaches comes out and asks, you can state that you did not see anything malicious, you just have a train wreck.

The catcher could misinterpret your comment, also. What is she not supposed to do again? Try to tag a runner coming home?

This might be a case of being better off just not saying anything unless asked.

JMO.....

I agree with Andy. There's nothing here to be instructing the catcher not to do again. Nothing to say on this play at all. Play on.

Only thing I'd say to either of them is, "everybody all right?"

Yeah, I though later I probably should've just kept quiet.

When writing up such situations, I can easily see what happened (in my mind), so my description SEEMS clear to me. Let me elaborate, fill in, etc.

The runner was well safe, starting to get up from the slide before the catcher left her feet on her diving "tag" attempt.

It was fairly violent - in football, it would have been as my subject line describes it.

I like the advice you gave.
To me it implies that you had given her the benefit of the doubt the *first* time.

But giving advice to any player is, in my mind, an ethics violation (although in your case a very minor one). As umpires we are supposed to enforce the rules and regs in an unbiased fashion.

Anyway, it was made abundantly clear to my association that no umpire should ever give advice to players in the game he/she is umpiring.

Well, then call it a polite ***warning***.
It is what it is. ;)

Even at 16&U, if I don't say something to F2, I'd be concerned about players trying to police the game themselves. So I suspect I'd have said something to the same extent that Tom did, quickly enough that the runner heard too.

Our association this year made a big point about defensive malicious contact. One could argue that the catcher falling on the runner after the play was over could be exactly that.

If no call, a strong warning.

As the father of a 16U catcher, I can tell you......they don't like runners scoring on them. Innocent?........maybe.

Just read this thread so pardon my delay....If you were in NFHS on this play would you have considered the "new" defensive malicious contact?

I'm going to have to see a whole lot more than I have pictured here to consider this malicious. There's been disagreement over whether something should be said, whether or not a warning should be given, and you're asking if the catcher should be tossed?