Illegal Pitch

[Mountaineer]

Originally Posted by IRISHMAFIA

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.

And that makes sense to me . . . for some stupid reason, I kept seeing a DDB on the IP and that's where I said it wouldn't work. Immediate DB does now make sense to me. I just had this picture in my mind that I couldn't get out - no matter what anyone said.

[NDblue]

I guess I personally don't feel that chalk or dirt is a foreign substance. As soon as a ball touches the ground whether by pitch or hit, it's going to have dirt and/or chalk on it. Are you changing to a new ball after every pitch? Most players will have dirt/chalk in their gloves by just using them and that's going to get on the ball as well. If a pitcher puts some dirt/chalk on his/her hand, I'm not too concerned about it. Heck, I've had pitchers almost bury the ball in dirt before they pitched it. Playing in wet conditions, the ball gets wet, the pitcher dries it off with some infield dirt, I'm not saying anything. It's not giving them any advantage that I can see.