Illegal Pitch

[IRISHMAFIA]

Originally Posted by Mountaineer

Just got off the phone with a member of the NFHS rules committee and he agrees with me. If you call an IP before you have a pitch (by rule) and she steps off - you have nothing. If a girl toes the rubber with her hands together, do you call that immediately too? While I can certainly see the validity of calling it the minute her hands come together, I also see more confrontation. Once the hands separate, she's committed to the pitch and there's nothing to argue about. My contact also agrees that if I call an IP when her hands come together and she steps back off the rubber - I have nothing and the IP is nullified.

Here's my question though - when you do this, are coming out and killing the play? "Dead ball, I have an IP for applying foreign substance!" That's the only way I could see that working.

Larry,

Is the rule for applying a foreign substance to the ball or pitching a ball to which a player applied a foreign substance?

If the former (as the ASA rule reads), then there is no pitch required as the violation is the application of the foreign substance, not the pitching of the ball.