Hand on ground, outside of box and makes contact

[Guest Gerry]

High and tight pitch knocks the batter down to the ground, but the pitch hits the bat and trickles into fair territory.  While going down, the batter's hand lands outside the box (with the other hand remaining on the bat).  Is it a live ball or is the batter deemed to be outside the batter's box while making contact with a legal pitch?

[Mudisfun]

Fair ball.

The location of the hand in relation to the box is not a consideration, only the batters feet when striking a ball would be considered for an illegally struck ball. I don't know many umpires who would be watching a batters feet when he is bailing out of the box on an inside pitch which then out of luck strikes the bat versus the batter. Talk about grabbing the stinky end of the stick if you called the batter out on that one.

[noumpere]

Play on.

[Cav]

NFHS 7-3-2 . . Hit the ball while either foot or knee is touching the ground completely outside the lines of the batter’s box or touching home plate.

[noumpere]

1 minute ago, Cav said:

NFHS 7-3-2 . . Hit the ball while either foot or knee is touching the ground completely outside the lines of the batter’s box or touching home plate.

Even with that, if the action is caused by the pitch (as in the OP), I'm not calling the batter out.

[Aging_Arbiter]

Right hand...............GREEN!

[beerguy55]

On 4/27/2018 at 10:24 AM, Cav said:

NFHS 7-3-2 . . Hit the ball while either foot or knee is touching the ground completely outside the lines of the batter’s box or touching home plate.

 

On 4/27/2018 at 10:26 AM, noumpere said:

Even with that, if the action is caused by the pitch (as in the OP), I'm not calling the batter out.

Even then, it would be a remarkable chain of events, or an extreme early reaction by the batter, to be on his ass with his hand, or knee, or foot,  touching the ground BEFORE the ball hits the bat.