Was it a bunt, or a swing with 2 strikes

[KentuckyBlue]

Kentucky Blue writes:
I raised some ire as BU in a B-level tourney game with a swaggering arrogant bunch of former baseball minor leaguers playing a team WAY beneath their ability. (Trophy hunting games set my jaw, don't they yours.) The other team, knowing they were WAY outclassed, played their infielders way back from the first pitch, and their right-handed leadoff guy punched it gently on the ground halfway up the 3B line. At the end of his bunt he let the big end of the bat go so it looked enough like a swing to fool PU, who was partially blocked by his angle and the catcher. He suspected something anyway and came to me for help (or else I never would have said anything of course) so I told PU he should ring him up for bunting, and he did. WILD indignity from the entire team of minor leaguers, who were used to pushing umpires around because they were all such superstars. (The manager upbraided another partner of mine for being casual in his choice of uniform clothes, saying that HE hadn't brought eight single-A ballplayers to a field to be called out by a guy dressed like that etc. etc.)Apparently bunting for a base hit was leadoff guy's favorite thing to do and he hadn't been called on it before. We played the rest of the game, they gave me the minimum federal standard daily dose of hell on every call of mine, routine or not, close or distant, and they won handily and advanced beyond where I had to bother with them.

In mentally reviewing why I called him out for bunting even though he technically swung (true, the swing would have embarrassed a 10U, but yes, it COULD have been called a swing), I decided it was because he had observably PLACED the ball. I know you can swing for placement too, but you're more picking generally the side of the field you want to hit to, or choosing to hit shallow or deep, than making a highly specific I'll-push-this-halfway-up-the-third-base-line placement typical of a bunt. I'm not doing a good job of explaining, guess YHTBT, but that might be one principle of calling bunt vs. swing in a close situation. --KB