Without regard to whether the injury merited stopping play, I don't think you're reading this right. The rule is not what would have happened if the injured participant had not been hit with the ball. It is what would have happened if the ball hitting the participant had not resulted in an immediate injury.
Suppose we have a deep fly ball to F9 who is about to make the catch when she runs into the fence and hurts herself badly enough you want to stop the game [unlikely though that scenario is]. As a result, instead of catching the ball, the runner would have had time to run to third. If you kill the ball immediately, you award third not call the BR out.

Which is the type of stuff that scares me about prematurely killing a play. Some umpires have a pretty good sense of how things would have worked out, but some really go off the deep end "what iffing" themselves to death trying to justify everything down to the last inch. And then a coach comes out and sells them a BS bill of goods that just makes thing that much more difficult for everyone.

When you do have to make such an application, I suggest when the play is over, get together with your partner(s), have a quiet discussion. Take your time to share what you know that did happen, what you may have anticipated at the beginning of the play and what you think would have happened had the play not been killed and include personal knowledge/observations of the ability of the players involved.

Cover as much as you can to eliminate as much of an argument that a coach is going to bring. Have this discussion away from the coaches and when you come out, know what you are going to do, announce it and move on. If a coach wants to argue, simply thank him/her for their input and restart the game. Having another conversation will not help any part of the situation unless, for some reason, the coach has a valid point that you did not consider. "What ifs" are not valid points.

xtremeump
 

Irish, very good post, thank you

It does depend on the level of injury. If the throw hits the coach in the head, knocking them out, I'm killing the play. If it hits them in the mouth and I see teeth flying out, I'm killing the play. If it hits them in the knee and they go down, we stop play when the play stops. IIRC the OP said they were obviously injured, but did not specify what the injury was. Obviously the seriousness of an injury to anyone is subject to the umpires judgement.

What would you do in this situation? You have an elderly player who after hitting the ball (to the outfield) falls and lays motionless for a couple seconds halfway down the base line. When I see an elderly person motionless on the field, even for a second, I'm killing the play and my first concern is the player. As it turned out, he had tripped and fallen and was motionless from embarrassment.


My first thought was massive heart attack, so massive embarrassment was a great result.

And my first thought will be get the ball to first.

Now, add in the fact the defensive team had the same thought I did, not about getting an out, but concern for the opponent. The first two people to the player were opposing team members with medical training. (It was a team of doctors and nurses that was on defense at the time).

The end result of the play was that the runner was awarded 1st base, but he voluntarily left the base because he did not feel he deserved it. The defense had no problem with hime getting first base, as they won 20-0 in 3 innings anyway.