Offense opens the gate

[IRISHMAFIA]

Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, the National Umpire Staff had to forsight to cover a lot of little things that no one ever thought would happen.

In more recent years, (I assume) it was a given that applying common sense to the rules made these little nuances of the rule book and manual obsolete and removed them. One of these little snippets buried amongst instructions to the umpires was to never enforce a rule if the result benefitted the offender's team.

I have actually seen this occur at a Men's Major Church NC where there was a loose ball and an individual standing at a gate at the end of the dugout behind 1B separated his feet and lifted the top of the gate. The ball went under and the BR was awarded 2B. The dugout was that of the batting team, but other than the other team whining about it, the three-man crew had no evidence it was intentional. We considered it one of the nuances of the field. Many fields have them an you just deal with it.

If I did not play a game every time there was a gap in the fence, an unsecure gate, hole in the backstop, I wouldn't work that many games.

That said, it should be noted in the OP that the ball did not go through the open game, but simple hit it and entered the dugout. The OP doesn't state whether the ball actually entered the opening created by the gate opening or entered the dugout via another means. Let's assume it passed through the subject gate.

There is a can of worms to be opened here. Where do you draw the line? What if a player is turned away and bouncing on the fence while conversing with someone and his "bounce" moved the bottom of the fence enough that a live ball squeeked through? Yeah, TWP, but it could happen since I've seen it happen. Where to you draw the line as to where you may award or not award bases? If you determine the player acted with intention, do you toss the player for UC?

Using 10.1 in this case, I would take the offense's intent (to some extent) and the defense's ability to readily make a play on the ball redirected out of play.