leaving a base early

[steveshane67]

Originally Posted by wadeintothem

The rule prevents a player from standing 10 yards into the outfield and timing his running start so he tags his base right as the ball is caught/touched - thus he cannot be appealed out, but he is already at a full speed run on the way home at the moment of the catch/touch.

And yes, I would expect an umpire to see that a runner was lining up behind the base as we are expected to see anything else...

i just got it, i misunderstood that V was talking about after contact, while R was talking about before contact.

stepping backwards to get a running tag seems awfully hard to time correctly. was this a common practice until that rule was put in place?