THs at it again
 

West Michigan-ND

"there's a nice pitch just out of the strike zone" "that's one of those pitches where the umpire, for both teams has been squeezing the strike zone".. HUH!?!?

It's out of the zone, but it's the umpire's fault it isn't a strike?

WTF do they get these idiots? (rhetorical)

Wish I had a dollar for every time I heard a TH say, "Close play, but tie goes to the runner." I hear this in both Softball and Baseball. Really ??? I can't seem to find this rule anywhere in the rulebooks...

asa 8.2.b

UM-UK

"Blocking the base would be obstruction, but that is where the ball took them (fielder)."

No, moron, it isn't OBS because the ball got there first, so the "about to receive" was evident. So far, that caveat has helped UM twice today.

I caught that one.
(edited to add)
Did you catch , "I believe it was a fair ball, then she was tagged"??? on that KY batter?
It was actually contact with a batter ball outside the batter's box.
(finally adding)......
Wow what an ending....

I did, but I did not see the ball touch the batter a second time. And come to think of it, if she were hit with the BB, wouldn't she still have been in the box for a dead ball?

Or is it possible he called her out for being outside the box?

Maybe I'm as bad as the TH!!
I thought I saw it hit her and was questioning if she was in the box or not.
(now I'm going from memory) - After making the DEAD BALL call, the Umpire did point to the ground towards the batters box which I would normally take to be indicating that she was hit while in the box (and a foul) - but since she was out, I figured I read that wrong.

Now that you mention it, maybe he WAS indicating she was out of the box on contact -
I'll have to get a better TV......
and not drink so much when watching...

Whoa! Let's not go overboard, now.:D

Outside the box
 

It appeared to me that she was called out for being hit by a fair ball while out of the batter's box. It did appear to hit her, at least in real time. I didn't think about her possible being called for being out of the box when the bat made contact with the ball. That is a definite possibility. Maybe even more likely.

Well, you and I pictured it the same on first impression.

Wonder if there is a way to check by looking at the box score.
I know less about scorekeeping than I do about umpiring ;)...
Is there a differwence in the way those outs are indicated or would they both be simply INT/F2?

PS: PU was a good example of comming up big and being demonstartive aboiut the call.
As I recall, there was little or no question about the call.

The televised TH's are bad ... but the ESPN3 streaming video TH's are even worse. Watched UCLA and Florida on ine. I don't think the TH's were watching the same game.

What'd ya think of the 6 hit batters - in a Run Rule game?

I didn't figure out ESPN3 untill the 3rd inning and only say 6th batter get hit, so I didn't really get to form an opinion

On the replay from the 3B side the ball and batter were not in the same frame. Even the THs noted that.

According to GameTracker, the batter (Dill) was listed as having grounded out to the C, unassisted, so apparently we were all overthinking the play and the catcher made a pretty good play.

I had the game recorded, so had a chance to go back and run through this play several times.

- Batter comes forward in typical fashion for a slap hit.

- It looks like her left/rear foot is pretty darn close to the plate when it plants. But you can't really see the lines of the box to know for sure where the foot is planted. The video gave me no clear view of whether she really was in or out of the box.

- Bat contacts ball, ball goes straight down and on the upward bounce appears to graze the batter's left ankle.

- The batter's left foot was planted on the ground when she hit the ball and was still planted in the same spot when the ball hit her ankle.

So, if she really was out of the box, she was out at the moment of bat/ball contact. In other words, she didn't hit the ball, then step out, then get hit.

- Plate umpire came right out with: A strong dead-ball signal; He pointed at the ground near batter's box and said, "She's out of the box"; Then followed with an out signal.

- Batter's reaction was sort of telling. She didn't pause, look around or otherwise react other than just going straight to the dugout. She seemed to know she was out.

And, of course, the talking heads seemed oblivious to all that with their following comments.

From the NFCA scoring guidelines:

Defense: Putouts
...
Credited to the catcher
...
d - when a batter is out for being touched by her own batted ball,
e - when the batter is called out for interfering with the catcher,

So, I'd have to say the scorebook information is inconclusive.