"Unnecessary and hard tag" - ASA

[LIUmp]

Is there a penalty for this?

[RKBUmp]

Unsportsmanlike conduct.

[LIUmp]

Cite rule please?

[RKBUmp]

What do you want a definition of? Your question is about an unnecessary and/or hard tag. Would you consider that to be sporting conduct even though it may not specifically be spelled out in the rules? If not, then it would be unsportsmanlike and pretty much up to your descretion to either warn or eject.

[IRISHMAFIA]

Originally Posted by LIUmp

Cite rule please?

In that case, there is none, so I guess you cannot do anything about it.

[LIUmp]

Thanks. Had someone ask me for rule citation. When I told him that sometimes common sense dictates what we call, he insisted that there must be words in the rule book for it.

[UmpireErnie]

The rule cite you are looking for is whatever rule in the ruleset you are working that covers unsporting acts in general. The words "unnecessary hard tag" won't be found. It's also not going to say specifically that a player cannot cuss out another player but I am certainly going to judge that to be an unsporting act and rule accordingly. What specific actions the umpire is going to judge as unsporting are left up to the official.

However, I don't think I have ever seen a tag that I thought was "Unnecessarily hard". I have seen some hard tags but it is the result of a diving tag or a fielder running to reach a runner and tag her and the tag ends up being a bit of a collision.

It would have to be a situation where I was convinced that a player was obviously using a tag as an excuse to haul off and slap the crapp out of an opposing player before I would call something on this. At least in my neck of the woods..I have never seen this kind of play.

[MD Longhorn]

Kind of wondering what happened that caused this question. If there's a tag on a moving runner, sometimes it's "hard" but necessary for any number of reasons. When I read unnecessary hard tag, I'm picturing a tag on a player that's already been on the base for 2-3 seconds and the fielder tags them unnecessarily.

My threshold for USC would be far different in the two cases.

[tcannizzo]

Saw this in Men's Modified game last week. You hear about it, and maybe have seen it, but when you see it, makes you stop and think.

R1 advancing to 2B in a single to CF.
F6 standing right behind 2B takes the throw and tries to apply a swipe tag on R2.
The tag comes around (R1 already on 2B), it was a hard tag in a place on the body where only nice things are supposed to happen.