Foul ball out of play

[NCASAUmp]

Originally Posted by Andy

Just curious here...

When a batter hits a foul ball that goes out of play, do you throw the new ball to the pitcher or hand it to the catcher to throw?

I have not ever heard it being taught one way or the other and I have seen it done both ways.

Personally, I usually hand the ball to the catcher since I don't want to risk my throw going into center field or bouncing to the pitcher.

Around here, it's "hit your own ball." I have the team toss a new ball to me for inspection (and still find the occasional .47 COR ball), then I'll hand it to the catcher. The last thing you want is to tweak your arm, shoulder or back, or, even worse, bean the pitcher when he averts his eyes at the last second before your throw (which is guaranteed to eventually happen)! If you hand it to the catcher and the pitcher gets beaned, it's not on you.

Related to that, I never toss a bat to a player, either. At the end of an inning, if the bat is next to me at the plate when I brush it off, I'll carefully hand it to a player on the team that owns it. Same reasoning.