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Coach/umpire


Guest Aaron
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Guest Aaron

Batter's Interference...R1 is stealing second as the batter swings and misses, falling across home plate and in front of the catcher in the process.  However, the catcher not only does NOT make contact with the batter during the throw, but also appears to get off a strong throw that was unaffected by the batter's presence.  The runner was safe and since I didn't feel like the batter actually interfered at all, I did not call interference and the coach lost it on me.  Was I correct?

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Does a batter usually fall across HP during a swing ? not in my experience. 
Does a batter fall across HP much more often when R1 is stealing ? yes, in my experience.

F2 may have seemed unaffected by batter's presence, but you can't know how much better a play he could have made absent the cheating batter. I penalize this behavior and get BI more often than not. And I'd rather deal with OHC than DHC (one of them is going to challenge your call).

That said, if there is no interference, there is no interference (i.e. a pitch out where B was nowhere near F2). 

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4 hours ago, Guest Aaron said:

since I didn't feel like the batter actually interfered at all,

By rule, that's all you need to know.

The batter is certainly liable for interference based on his actions, but if he didn't interfere, it's not interference.

We'd have to see video to evaluate your judgment on the play.

 

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If you judge that there was no interference, then there wasn't.  However, a lot of times, perception is reality.  Do you think you would have heard a peep out of the OC had you called interference?  "Catcher not only does NOT make contact... " is irrelevant to this play.

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And so the catcher is better off to not throw the ball at all and make a very visible display that he didn't do so because the batter was there.  Or worse, throw the ball into the batter, or step forward and accidentally on purpose contact the batter.

Don't get me wrong - the ump is usually in a tough spot here.  The rules as they are written, and the subjective standards by which an umpire measures hindrance or success, encourage and incentivize bad behavior.

The catcher with integrity who makes the attempt likely doesn't get the BI call because there's nothing the ump can really see or discern in real time that shows he was hindered.

The catcher who "flops" gets the call almost every time.

And this is why we have floppers, not just in soccer - because they have learned, from the time they were children, and then reinforced all the way up into their professional/adult lives, that it's the only way to make 100% sure an official sees the infraction that occurred.  

The catcher got off a good clean throw...but perhaps he would have got of a better cleaner throw.  Give the benefit of the doubt to the defense.

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In my experience, I find it pretty difficult to tell if F2 had to shorten up on his follow through as to not slam his hand/arm/wrist into the batter's helmet/shoulder/bat if he's falling across the plate. If F2 couldn't get full extension on his follow though of the throw, I've got BI. Benefit of the doubt goes to the catcher when batter is across the plate. 

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1 hour ago, Richvee said:

In my experience, I find it pretty difficult to tell if F2 had to shorten up on his follow through as to not slam his hand/arm/wrist into the batter's helmet/shoulder/bat if he's falling across the plate. If F2 couldn't get full extension on his follow though of the throw, I've got BI. Benefit of the doubt goes to the catcher when batter is across the plate. 

Ask your physics teacher. Once the ball leaves the catcher's hand no more force can be applied to the ball so nothing he does afterward (including shortening his follow through) will affect the ball.

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1 hour ago, Rich Ives said:

Ask your physics teacher. Once the ball leaves the catcher's hand no more force can be applied to the ball so nothing he does afterward (including shortening his follow through) will affect the ball.

That's a very superficial thought, though. Of course, in and of itself, your statement is true, but it would be exceedingly difficult for the catcher to simultaneously begin to shorten the follow through yet apply all the force he intended with a normal follow through. By your very statement of a shortened follow through, he changed the force he wanted to impart. In other words, he was hindered.

In fact, there would be much LESS hindrance under your construct by having the catcher complete his normal follow-through and hit the batter, since then the throw truly had all the intended force. And everyone would (or should) call that BI.

 

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20 minutes ago, scrounge said:

That's a very superficial thought, though. Of course, in and of itself, your statement is true, but it would be exceedingly difficult for the catcher to simultaneously begin to shorten the follow through yet apply all the force he intended with a normal follow through. By your very statement of a shortened follow through, he changed the force he wanted to impart. In other words, he was hindered.

In fact, there would be much LESS hindrance under your construct by having the catcher complete his normal follow-through and hit the batter, since then the throw truly had all the intended force. And everyone would (or should) call that BI.

 

The throw leaves the hand when it's nearly overhead. You probably haven/t even noticed the batter there yet.   

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12 minutes ago, Rich Ives said:

The throw leaves the hand when it's nearly overhead. You probably haven/t even noticed the batter there yet.   

And you think that the reaction time is so swift that the signal from the brain to slow down the follow through and pull up short is in that exceedingly short window of the ball leaving the hand at the apex of the throw at full velocity to the end of the follow through? Nope, that makes no sense. And if you tried to pull that during an argument, it would be an even shorter conversation.

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3 hours ago, Rich Ives said:

Ask your physics teacher. Once the ball leaves the catcher's hand no more force can be applied to the ball so nothing he does afterward (including shortening his follow through) will affect the ball.

And nevertheless 19 umps out of 20 will call BI if the catcher hits him on the follow through.

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On 3/21/2017 at 3:28 PM, Rich Ives said:

Ask your physics teacher. Once the ball leaves the catcher's hand no more force can be applied to the ball so nothing he does afterward (including shortening his follow through) will affect the ball.

What @scrounge said....I haven't had a physics teacher in 40 years :D

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3 minutes ago, Richvee said:

I haven't had a physics teacher in 40 years

I have an engineering degree, and am married to a physics teacher.

While it's technically true that no more force can be applied to the ball after it's released, you still need to decelerate your hand/arm/shoulder in a controlled manner to avoid injury. If you can "pull up short", that means you began your deceleration before you let go of the ball (IOW, interfered).

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19 hours ago, kylehutson said:

I have an engineering degree, and am married to a physics teacher.

While it's technically true that no more force can be applied to the ball after it's released, you still need to decelerate your hand/arm/shoulder in a controlled manner to avoid injury. If you can "pull up short", that means you began your deceleration before you let go of the ball (IOW, interfered).

Person dependent - not universal

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2 hours ago, Rich Ives said:

Person dependent - not universal

I'll believe that as soon as you start teaching your pitchers to stop short and not follow-through.

Here's a little light reading for you.

And compare that with this, which says, in part:

"In order to deliver a baseball to a batter, a pitcher has to release the ball at exactly the right point in the throw. A timing error of half a millisecond in either direction is enough to cause the ball to miss the strike zone.

To put that in perspective, it takes about five milliseconds for the fastest nerve impulse to travel the length of the arm. That means that when your arm is still rotating toward the correct position, the signal to release the ball is already at your wrist. In terms of timing, this is like a drummer dropping a drumstick from the 10th story and hitting a drum on the ground on the correct beat."

All that to say that humans are particularly adept at throwing things. We anticipate what will happen in order to avoid injury, so even when we think we're not slowing down to stop short, we are.

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6 minutes ago, kylehutson said:

I'll believe that as soon as you start teaching your pitchers to stop short and not follow-through.

Here's a little light reading for you.

And compare that with this, which says, in part:

"In order to deliver a baseball to a batter, a pitcher has to release the ball at exactly the right point in the throw. A timing error of half a millisecond in either direction is enough to cause the ball to miss the strike zone.

To put that in perspective, it takes about five milliseconds for the fastest nerve impulse to travel the length of the arm. That means that when your arm is still rotating toward the correct position, the signal to release the ball is already at your wrist. In terms of timing, this is like a drummer dropping a drumstick from the 10th story and hitting a drum on the ground on the correct beat."

All that to say that humans are particularly adept at throwing things. We anticipate what will happen in order to avoid injury, so even when we think we're not slowing down to stop short, we are.

As they say, hit a round ball with a round bat, squarely - hardest thing to do in all of sports.  Not to mention the complex calculus equations an outfielder computes on the fly while shagging a fly ball.  It's pretty remarkable what we can do, and how little margin for error there is in it.

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3 hours ago, beerguy55 said:

As they say, hit a round ball with a round bat, squarely - hardest thing to do in all of sports.  Not to mention the complex calculus equations an outfielder computes on the fly while shagging a fly ball.  It's pretty remarkable what we can do, and how little margin for error there is in it.

Not calculus. Can't be calculus. Geometry, maybe and likely. But I was a really good catcher, and quite an adept outfielder. I was also an all-conference wide receiver and punt/kick returner for football. I sucked at Calculus. Ruined most of my collegiate academic prospects.

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4 hours ago, MadMax said:

Not calculus. Can't be calculus. Geometry, maybe and likely. But I was a really good catcher, and quite an adept outfielder. I was also an all-conference wide receiver and punt/kick returner for football. I sucked at Calculus. Ruined most of my collegiate academic prospects.

See this.

Just because you can't run the numbers, doesn't mean your brain isn't doing roughly the same thing, just using different techniques than the algorithms you were taught (or, I guess, at least told) when taking a calc class.

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11 hours ago, MadMax said:

But I was a really good catcher, and quite an adept outfielder. I was also an all-conference wide receiver and punt/kick returner for football. I sucked at Calculus. Ruined most of my collegiate academic prospects.

Yeah?  Well I walked to school, up hill both ways.....in the snow.

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3 hours ago, Aging_Arbiter said:

Yeah?  Well I walked to school, up hill both ways.....in the snow.

We used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o'clock at night, and LICK the road clean with our tongues. We had half a handful of freezing cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at the mill for fourpence every six years, and when we got home, our Dad would slice us in two with a bread knife.

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47 minutes ago, beerguy55 said:

We used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o'clock at night, and LICK the road clean with our tongues. We had half a handful of freezing cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at the mill for fourpence every six years, and when we got home, our Dad would slice us in two with a bread knife.

Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing 'Hallelujah.'

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5 minutes ago, Aging_Arbiter said:

So we went from BI.......to dancing on graves..........:confused:

Correct.

Please do try to keep up. :D

Waitaminute - I just looked above, and you seem to have started this whole distraction with the "walked to school" comment.

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