Obstructed runner contacts defender
 

Sit 1: R1 coming home, F2 blocking the plate, play goes to 3B. F2, watching play, fails to move and R1 knocks her down in attempt to reach plate. (Not flagrant or malicious.)

Sit 2: F4 is set in baseline; R1 is stealing and runs into F4.

In both cases, we signal obstruction. But then what? Both ASA Crash Rule and NFHS slide or avoid illegal contact discuss a defender in the act of making a play on the runner. That is not true in my situations.

Can you give me a rule, interpretation, or case play in either code to support calling the runner out? If not, when do the basepaths become shooting galleries?


WMB

Are these people standing there, like statues so to speak, where the runner has plenty of time to go around them?

Both situations: If contact is unavoidable (ie., F2 steps in at the last second), then I have nothing on R1. If contact is avoidable, I've got USC. I'll still count the run in sitch 1, because the ejection is coming after the play's over (though many of you know how I feel about letting a runner score after USC).

OBS does not give a runner a chance to give a free shot. If I've got OBS, I've got that runner protected from being put out, and I'll award the base she would've reached. Therefore, there's absolutely NO reason for contact if it's avoidable. Unfortunately, I've heard some coaches teach the exact opposite, then wonder why their player is tossed.

If it's adult rec league, I might give the defensive player a "heads up" and advise them not to be in the base path, else they might get inadvertantly creamed. ;)

Umpires out here this season have not been calling any OBS or INT calls if there is no contact. I've seen dozens of games and neither has been called if the players don't touch each other. I do mean literally not one, single time.
So as a result some coaches began telling their players mid-season that they had to contact the player in order to get the call. So they have been doing so since then, without malice, and have been getting the calls instead of no calls, and there's been no USC calls.

What I can't figure out is why it took contact for the umpires to call OBS when the runners' progress was clearly impeded on several occasions that I witnessed, but never called. Or fielders with first play on batted balls seemed to be interfered with by base runners, but INT was never called until things changed and the fielders started to make sure that there was contact with the base runner. It's almost as if the umpires were afraid to call OBS or INT without obvious proof (contact). Now with the contact between two players the calls have to be made.

The more experienced, aggressive teams, with heads-up players have worked this to their advantage by initiating contact or putting themselves in the way, while the smaller, more meek teams' players still avoid all contact both ways, and never get the calls made.