Obstruction

[IRISHMAFIA]

Originally Posted by GROUPthink

That's still the case in NFHS baseball. All obstruction is delayed dead and there's a minimum award of one advance base. No idea about softball -- I don't work the sport.

Well, maybe it should be more like softball.

In my area, when Fed had the automatic award, many umpires refused to call OBS on any defender dropping a knee to block the base on a pick-off play simply because they did not believe in awarding the runner a base undeserved. Once that was changed to reflect the ASA award, more OBS were called and eventually, the players stopped dropping the knee when it was realized they were no longer going to get the out call, and the bruised leg just wasn't worth it.

Not much different then some umpires ignoring an IP because they don't want to move runners as that is purely a punitive award especially if there is a runner beyond 1B. We can stand around all day and say it isn't so, but it is and anyone who has been around long enough has probably seen this.

Obviously, there are times when a rule or reward may need to be punitive, but it certainly shouldn't be the standard response to an infraction.