fair or foul?

[John Chladek]

HS Softball game. BR hits a spinning little popup that lands in front of home plate. As BR is sprinting to 1B, balls spins back and hits F2, who by this time is in (the front of) the RH batter's box. Ump calls "foul ball" and when questioned, draws the extention of the foul line through the batter's box to home plate and says F2 was behind this line when she touched the ball. Leaving aside the issue that it is the ball that matters and not where F2 is standing, do umps really have to make this call without the benefit of the line drawn in? Or do umps commonly call any ball/player contact in batter's box as foul, regardless of whether the player is offense or defense?

[ChampaignBlue]

It's strictly where the ball is when touched. We often don't have a line in the outfield either yet we still call fair or foul. Sometimes we have lines that were drawn by someone that needs to re-read the substance abuse policy and we ignor those lines and use the bags, plate and foul poles. Part of the batters box and all of the plate are in fair territory. Jim

[Skahtboi]

Yup. You have to judge by where the ball is in relationship to fair/foul territory when touched.

Scott

[Andy]

While Jim and Scott are, of course, correct. I'm reading the original situation a little differently.

The original post said the ball was spinning and hit the catcher. If, in fact, she was on the foul side of the line and the ball hit her on the part of her body that was outside of the foul line (her foot, for example) it is a foul ball. If the ball is still on or over fair territory when it contacts a player, it's fair.

John's original post first says that the ball hits the catcher, then that the catcher touched the ball. Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but these two statements seem to be contradictory.

Also: a batted ball that hits the BR while she is in the batters box will be ruled as a foul ball, regardless of where in the box the batter was.

[John Chladek]

Andy-

I was aware of the rule on the batter, was just wondering if, by practice, that rule was extended to the defense because of the difficulty of ascertaining where the line is. I guess not. Thanks!

By the way, the ball did hit the catcher, but question has more to do with where the catcher was standing when hit. She had come out of her crouch and was moving to field the ball, so it was very difficult for any of us to see where, exactly, in the box she was at contact.

[CecilOne]

Even though it's hard to see how she could be in the front of the batter's box and the ball spinning back from fair ground be in foul territory when contact occurred, it is the foul line extended and not the batter's box that applies. Depends on what the front of the box means. However, if the ump called it or justified it based on the catcher's feet and not the ball, then it was probably a wrong call. That would be correct only for the batter, not a fielder.

[whiskers_ump]

The way I am reading and picturing this, it was so
quick and hard
to determine what was where. "Do not guess the batter out." Call
foul and go on. And as an umpire, never start drawing lines for
fair/foul or batter boxes.

JMHO

glen

[John Chladek]

Oops. Glen's reply made me realize I had left out some of the story. After the ball hit the cathcher, it still had so much spin that it skittered away from her in front of the plate. BR was halfway to 1B and would have beaten it out easily. So, instead of "guessing the batter out" it was more like "guessing the batter back to the plate from 1B". It didn't matter in the game, she doubled on the next pitch!