obviouslyl the offense changed the playing field and its structures. start there and see where that leads you.

there is a rule about that i believe.

until ump calls time or a dead ball, gate stays closed. opening of the gate is changing the playing field. rule appropriately. read ALT ump.

I hear you... but I see no rule even remotely related to opening a fence to let it go out of play. Blocked? Equipment? This is an overthrow that rolled into DBT... how do we put the blocked ball rules into this scenario? If I do not allow the offense to benefit from the OP, what rule do I use to support my case when it's protested?

Gets me no where. I'm relatively positive there is nothing in any rulebook addressing a team changing the structures around a playing field. About the closest to this would be intentionally erasing a line - but there's no way that applies here.

I understand what you're saying, but I think you may be going by a ruleset other than ASA.

Does the definition of a blocked ball that I provided earlier not already handle this?

Don't get me wrong ... I completely understand the DESIRE to not let offense benefit from what happened here. And I agree with "unfairly" in this sentence quoted. But "illegally"? By what rule?

Even if I want to, I can't see how. The fence, while touched or moved by the offense, is under no definition "equipment".

So this is not a ball that is "touched, stopped or handled by a person not engaged in the game?"

No ... it's a ball touched by a gate.

...that was under the control of an offensive player.

This is where I am stuck.

Honestly, I believe that the solution, whatever it may be MUST also cover the case where the player opens the gate and the ball simply rolls out. There cannot be one ruling for cases where it hits this mistakenly opened gate and rolls out, and another different ruling for where it simply rolls out the open gate.

I see where you're trying very hard to go with this, and I respect that. But to me it doesn't fit, and further it doesn't solve the other situation.

And I agree with you to a point, Mike. I do. To be honest, I don't think that anything "neatly fits" this scenario. To me, this is not a simple case of "oops, it just went into DBT." The actions of the offense, intentionally or not, caused the ball to exit the field of play when it would not have otherwise done so.

For once (and probably the last time, :rolleyes:) I'm going to agree with mbcrowder. I don't see this as anything but a ball being thrown out of play. Let's not forget that if the defense had done their job, the ball would not be close to going out of play.

I umpired a game on a field that was totally enclosed, with the gates at the teams' dugouts, nearly in line with 1st and 3rd bases. The gate on the 1st base side did not have a working latch. All you had to do was push on it to get it to swing outward. It just so happened that a pop-up to F3 near the fence ended up directly adjacent to the gate. She caught the ball, leaned on the gate, and the gate swung out causing her to enter deadball territory. Weird? Yes. Was this anything but a catch and carry? No. Would the situation have changed if the gate were functional and the opposing team did not latch it correctly? Nope. Similar instance in the OP.

Aw now! ;)