Interference on a walked batter

[jmkupka]

Love hearing about rulings, then checking them out here for their validity...

My experienced partner, who played fastpitch himself for 20 yrs as F2, says: with R1 on 3rd, ball 4 to the batter, in order to prevent the rundown trick ( to score R1), he used to fire the ball down to F3 before BR reached 1B. Again, this just prevented BR from rounding 1B. This technique was known to the umpires who called his games.

His point to me was, if said BR happened to be outside the 3' running lane (in fair territory) and got hit with the throw, BR is out for INT (and R1 back to 3B if trying to advance).

What say my mentors?