Glove to Glove Contact

[Manny A]

I worked a girls fast-pitch doubleheader this weekend involving a team from Japan playing some local 18U GOLD teams. The Japanese team, as I expected from watching their country's participants in the Little League World Series, were very skilled and disciplined, and showed the highest levels of sportsmanship. At one point in one of my games, after a US girl was hit by a pitch in the leg, a Japanese girl ran out of the dugout with a can of cold spray for the US girl to use on her injury.

But there was one particular play that I'm pretty sure I blew, although nobody questioned my call. The US team had a runner on first with two outs. The batter hit a little looper up the middle that F4 was able to field on the hop. As F6 waited on second base for the toss from F4, F4 decided to make the play herself. But then at the last second as R1 approached, instead of tagging the base herself, F4 put her glove that held the ball inside of F6's glove.

What I initially thought was that F4 simply transferred the ball from her glove into her teammate's glove. It appeared to me that F6 had the ball just before R1 arrived, so I called her out. Then, as the fielders headed back to their dugout, I noticed when they separated their gloves that F4 still had the ball inside of hers! In essence, F6's glove held F4's glove, while F4's glove still had the ball. There was never a transfer.

I talked to my partner a couple of innings later and explained to him what happened. I felt pretty sure that F6 never had true possession of the ball because F4 never released it from her possession. He wasn't sure, but he felt that I was probably right that the runner should have been safe.

In my 17+ years of umpiring, I've never seen anything like that. The closest thing to it that I have seen was in a professional baseball game where the ball got stuck in F1's glove after he fielded hot shot, and he tossed his glove with the ball in it to F3 for the out.