Wednesday, May 15, 2013
2013 MiLB #foodfight
(www.milb.com)
Hungry?
Fans are lining up for oversized sandwiches, massive plates of food or batting helmets filled with edible delights. Which of these 16 food items will be the Greatest of the Gut Busters?
Reader Comments and Retorts
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1 2 >What would have happened if he would have made a "pitch" from the rubber? I expect that would have counted as a play (dead ball? ball for the next batter?) and rendered the touch of home unappealable.
You are correct. No game action can happen between the play and the appeal.
If Mondesi had seen them getting ready for the appeal could he have just sprinted out of the dugout and touched the plate? I don't think so but that brings up a second question. After the Pierzynski play in the 2005 ALCS I think the rule was changed that if a base runner abandoned the base path he was ruled out. Does Mondesi not touching the plate meet that criteria making the appeal unnecessary?
Ok, I presumed so. Do you (or anyone) know what the relevant rule is for a pitcher pitching to an empty batter's box (outside of the no-more-than-eight warmup pitches)?
7.08(k) covers making no attempt to return to the plate by the runner, but doesn't make note of at what point he's no longer able to try to return to the plate. I thought the "Pierzynski" rule was in the rules comments somewhere, but not finding it right now. Pretty sure the LL rule is you're done once you hit the dugout, though, as another poster mentioned.
If the umpire calls "play" and the hitter isn't in the box, the hitter is ###### is the rule there I think. In this case he is not throwing a pitch because he disengaged the rubber first so the pitcher became an infielder at that point. If the pitcher had thrown a pitch to get the ball to the catcher then the appeal would have been rejected.
Little League* uses the same "makes no attempt to return" language. Doesn't mention a Rubicon that he must cross. An explanation follows to clarify that the rule is intended to prevent a situation where the catcher is trying to chase down the runner headed away from the play, and that it does not apply to a runner trying to get to the plate, who has to be tagged to be out.
* - Assuming you mean THE Little League organization and not a generic youth league.
That is correct. Once in the dugout, the runner cannot return to touch the plate.
Suppose it wasn't a HR, but say a runner scoring from third on a single. How does the pitcher appeal then? Presumably, a throw home while off the rubber and runners on is a balk, no?
In that case, the ball would be live without the ump having to put it back in play (assuming time was never called), and they can just appeal directly without having to engage the rubber.
And a throw home (or to another base) after disengaging the rubber is legal. Ball should be live, so the runners can do as they please at their own risk.
You deliberately step off the rubber. You fire to the base being appealed. The fielder catches the ball and steps on the bag where the appeal is being made. No balk. It's the same process if you believe the runner left the base early.
So, if the pitcher is off the rubber and throws home, it is not a pitch. Can the batter swing at it?
only if he's Vlad Guerrero (he was grandfathered in)
If the pitcher steps off the rubber he is an infielder. Any throw he makes at that point is a "throw" and not a "pitch". In your example the batter swinging would be the equivalent of sticking his bat out to block a throw by the catcher to second base.
Got it.
You can only score a run by safely touching home, and you can only safely touch home after safely touching third, and you can only safely touch third after safely touching first.
Are you suggesting rules should be changed so that when a home run is hit, the batter and any base runners should just walk directly off the field to the dugout?
Precisely. Or he can jog around and touch all the bases if he wants, or he can do the macarena. But to require him to touch every base is entirely silly.
That's entirely different, given that there is a non-trivial possibility of either a wild pitch, or a pitch so close to the strike zone that the batter might take a whack at it. The game is actually being played.
Once the ball clears the fence, the game is not actually being played in any meaningful way until the next pitch. The defense is powerless to do anything, except hope one of the runners misses a base, or collapses from a heart attack or something. It's very silly.
because its BASEball!!1!11!!!
besides, i don't think there is a batter in the world who wouldn't want to jog the bases after hitting a homer.
No. If a batsman hits a boundary, the runs are automatically added to the total, but he doesn't have to actually run.
Likely true, but wanting to do something because it's joyful and being required to do something because of a rule-for-a-rule's-sake rule are quite different things.
I don't think that would matter.
I think rewriting (or hell, initially writing) the rules of what is required for a run to be plated in this one specific instance would be sillier.
Heck, it's an endurance game anyway, so you should have to throw every pitch. I always find people touting the just give them the base argument to be missing some of the point of the game. I don't agree with you on the not touching the base thing...well not exactly. I don't really care if they touch the base, but they should be required to run the bases. If making them touch the base is the only way to enforce that, then stick with the rule, if you just say that they have to run in the base lines for a homerun, then that is fine also, but there should be no "swing, go to the dugout" type of thing going on.
What would be so silly about a rule that says: once a batted ball is ruled by the umpire to have cleared the outfield fence in fair territory or is otherwise meeting the ground rule qualifications for a home run, it is a home run, and the batter and any baserunners are counted as scoring a run.
That's all it has to say. It doesn't have to require the batter/runners to do anything.
You've got to think of it like this: a homerun is 99.9% hitting the ball over the fence, and 0.1% touching all 4 bases. You've got to touch home to score, and you have to touch the first three bases before you can touch home. Physically touching the bases is a small but significant part of the scoring process.
to me, suggesting otherwise is missing some point of the game. ymmv.
or occasionally, 99.9% over the wall 0.1% touching 3rd and .0001% breaking your ankle
No, you don't have to think of it like that. That's the way the rules are, I understand that. It doesn't make the rules optimal. It doesn't mean that's the way it has to be.
Right. In addition to this, we wouldn't have:
Kendrys braking his leg
Robin Ventura grand slam single
The weird ending to the Haddix game
One flap down
And so on. Once or twice in a generation something interesting would be lost.
There's no reason whatsoever to think that you wouldn't have Kendrys breaking his leg, or one flap down. The notion that batters wouldn't do home run trots, or that teams wouldn't engage in raucous celebrations following walk-off HRs, is, well, silly.
Seconded. A favorite hobby horse (that I am alone in riding, as far as i know) is to see an MLB-level game played without fences. I'd love to see how many homers hit by slow sluggers would turn into triples or outs.
This was exactly the question my soccer-fan coworker asked when I tried to explain the video originally shown in TFA. I settled for the old "that's just how it is" response.
Re the IBB - my dad long ago told me there's a rule that if the pitcher "goes to his mouth" the HPU can call a ball, and wondered why some genius somewhere didn't start licking his palm 4 times to issue an IBB.
Don Drysdale liked to say, "Why waste three extra pitches? I'll just hit him in the a$$ on the first pitch."
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