What is this?
 

No runners on base. Batter hits an infield grounder to F5, who fumbles a bit, and makes a not very good throw to F3, pulling F3 off the bag toward home. F3 makes the catch, but is reaching back with her foot to try to find the bag, unsuccessfully. Her flailing foot/leg is stretched out into foul territory, tripping up the BR, who goes down. F3 does find the bag and touch it before the BR can scramble over to the base.

So, what is this?

From description of F3 reaching for the base with foot I would assume this happened right at 1st base. Did batter/runner fall past the base after being tripped? If so, by rule they are considered to have touched the base until properly appealed. I would not consider F3 to have made a proper appeal unless they verbally indicated the batter/runner had missed the base.

Can't have obstruction since F3 has the ball in her possession. She didn't intentionally trip the BR (and even if she had, I'm not sure what rule you would use to award the BR first since it's still not covered by the obstruction rule).

I don't see anything that would warrant a call other than an out at first on the BR, unless I'm missing something.

Rule set?

ASA.

Also, to answer RKBUmp's question, she was far enough up the line that the BR fell just short of 1B, so no appeal.

I have an out.

So is RKBUmp wrong in the softball world? (It's the right approach in baseball.)

He indicated in another post the batter/runner fell short of 1st base so having passed the base never came into play.

I'm still waiting for something that isn't apparent to me, even after a multitude of cups of coffee. I don't understand how this isn't a pretty straightforward situation, especially since Mike felt compelled to ask for a specific rule set.

Is there something out there where this F3 would be guilty of some infraction? I cannot see awarding the BR first base here since F3 had possession of the ball.

I don't think there's anything not apparent to you, or the rest of us. I think this is one of those, "Something looked odd there but I didn't know what to call, so I'll ask about it on the forum" situations. And as it turns out, there's nothing to call.

It could be one of those "an umpire in my game called XXXXX on a weird play in my game and I didn't understand why, so I'll ask about it on the forum" situations - in which case the umpire probably messed up.

It's a case of "the right call just doesn't seem right". The fielder extended her leg into the path of the runner, tripping the runner, and without tripping the runner, was not going to get the out.

Okay, I can see that.

Where it gets even more dicey is when you see something blatant, and there's nothing you can really do about it, short of a warning for unsporting behavior. Say with R1 at first, there's a ground ball to F4, and after fielding it, she falls face-first to the ground in R1's path. R1 tries to hurdle F4, and F4 intentionally lifts one of her legs and trips her. As R1 does her own faceplant, F4 recovers and tosses the ball to F6 covering second.

I don't think there's a rule that you can use here to award R1 second base.

Like in that other thread where I went so far as to say that if a fielder with the ball (F3 in that other thread) clearly intentionally (yet not maliciously) pushed the runner so that they couldn't reach the base - you really don't have grounds for any call on the fielder.

As much as I hate to say it....Rule 10-1.

Before you all start in with the "judicious use of rule 10" stuff, are you really going to allow a fielder with the ball to intentionally trip a runner to increase the defense's chance to get an out? As I see it, the rules seem to have been written with the thought in mind that if a fielder with the ball and a runner are in close proximity, the fielder should just tag the runner to get the out. Manny's example, while I have never seen it, is a realistic situation that could and probably has happened. I'm ruling a dead ball, awarding the runner second base and potentially ejecting the defender for the trip.

From what I can see, this is a situation not specifically covered in the rules.

We had a similar play this last weekend, R1 on first, base hit to the outfield, R1 takes a big turn around second, ball is thrown to F4 who is on the right field side of second base about 6 - 7 feet. R1 starts to return to second, F4 moves to tag R1, R1 gets to the bag standing up a split second before F4 applies the tag. Since both players were coming from opposite directions, the force of the tag knocked R1 off of second base. F4 holds the tag on R1 off the base.

BU calls R1 safe, then dead ball and places R1 back on second.

I'm not sure that's right. From time to time around here someone will come around and ask if such and such is illegal because they can't find a rule that makes it legal. And they'll hear. "If it's not against the rules, it's legal." Now you're saying if it's not against the rules than it's a 10-1 situation and I think that oversimplifies the situation greatly.

That is not what I am saying at all....I am using that rule to address this one specific situation.

Letting a fielder with the ball intentionally trip a runner to make it easier to get an out is not, in my opinion, something the rule makers intended.

One could argue that in the situation I presented, there was intent. That is, the fielder intentionally placed her leg in front of the runner, and the runner tripped over it. Her intent was not to trip the runner directly, but her intentional act did trip the runner.

I would have ruled the same way on this. In this situation there was no intent to displace the runner from the base she had legally attained, but the defense did cause the runner to come off of the base. I am not penalizing the offense for a play in which they did what they should have done. I am not penalizing the defense for hustling to make a play either. Neither team is disadvantaged by ruling exactly what happened, the runner reached the base and was forced off the base she legally attained.

I did come very close to tossing a couple players last season over a similar call (men's SP, ASA rules). R1 on first, Be hits a single to right. Right fielder throws a shot to F5 covering 3b. The throw is slightly short, so the fielder has to step into the infield a couple steps. He catches it, and attempts to step back towards third base. The runner comes in, does a half-slide and pops up. As he pops up, his momentum carries him off the base. I call him out for coming off the base. The offensive comes unglued. The runner and the coach nearly get tossed arguing the call. I ruled the runners momentum, not the actions of the fielder caused the out.

An inning later, the wife of one of the players (someone I've known for years), comes over and tells me why they were so upset. Apparently the teams played the previous week and the defensive team was pushing players off the bases regularly on close tag plays. The arguing carried over from the previous weeks lack of calls by the umpire (this league uses a 1 man crew) for pushing players off the base on tag plays.

So a fielder with possession of the ball cannot slide in front of an advancing runner to keep her from touching the base until after the tag is applied?

The reason I asked the rule set is because ISF does have an allowance for a defender with the ball, but not making a play on the runner to be called for OBS. Rare, but I guess somewhere along the way something happened to cause that rule to exist.

If it wasn't intentional, IMO, the call would be out. I do, however, find it strange that F3 was reaching for a base that was so far away that a felled advancing runner was still short of the base.

Recalibrating for level of play... ;)

Had something kind of similar happen the other night. 18U using ASA rules. R1 on 2nd, left handed batter. F5 is well off the line and fields a ground ball. Reaching for a tag she had put the ball in her throwing hand, but reaching with her glove hand, slowing up/obviously impedes the runner, and then reaching back with the ball to tag R1 in the back.

Had F5 not hooked R1 with the glove (non-ball) hand, she would have safely reached 3rd. I (BU) called the runner out on the tag. OC came out to ask about obstruction. As I've said before I am an ex-(licensed) umpire who did NFHS/NCAA with my last test about 5 years ago, but get called upon when necessary.

THe PU is an ASA umpire so I brought him into the conversation. I had a hard time calling obstuction on the player with the ball, but he told me to call it OBS, so I did.

This was in the top of the 1st. It took 45 minutes to get 3 outs(including a step-off for the 2nd out, but coach wouldn't give us the 3rd).Final score 31-0. I told PU we could have used that out back in the 1st.

You CANNOT call obstruction on a fielder that has the ball.

Whether you can, or should, in this case use rule 10 to rule on a situation not covered in the rulebook (a situation which seems to me to be something that could easily be foreseen by the rulesmakers and thus would be in the rulebook if they wanted it to be against the rules ...) is the issue at hand.

The rule book is clear that obstruction can only be called on a fielder who is not in possession of the ball (ISF excepted) who is impeding the progress of the runner.

Putting it another way, impeding the progress of the runner is in the "job description" of a defensive player with the ball.

But, does this legal impeding include grabbing, hooking, tripping, or tackling and THEN making the play on the runner?

I have a hard time with that being the situation intended to be covered by the obstruction rule, but short of using 10-1, it would seem an out is the only call supported by the book.