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| SOFTBALL LINKS |
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Fair er Foul Ball???
by Dave
Friday, April 30, 2010
I have seen and heard about some rather confounding incidents on the field. Most of the worst ones involve balls called fair or foul incorrectly. Apparently some umps operate only within their personal experience, however limited that might be when making these calls. I say that because too many of these calls have been rather, well, wrong.
I am going to kick off this discussion with a pop quiz for you. A batter hits or bunts a ball which strikes the plate and bounced skyward. The balls comes down and stops right on the plate where the catcher then standing wholly in foul ground picks it up and fires to first ahead of the baserunner who is stumbling and staggering around, uncertain of whether she should run or not. What's your call? : Fair or foul?
Let's answer this by stating that homeplate is very much a part of fair territory. So are, as a matter of fact the so called "foul lines." So a ball resting on the plate or the foul lines that is picked up by a defensive player is a fair ball.
Further, the positioning of a player has absolutely no bearing on whether a ball is fair or foul. The catcher being entirely in foul territory, while a physical impossibility when she reaches for the ball on the plate, is completely irrelevant to the discussion. The only item which matters is the location of the ball. In other words, a player can at least theoretically be completely in foul ground when she touches an otherwise fair ball and that ball is fair, plain and simple.
The reason I state this as such is I have seen countless examples of balls being poorly hit or bunted and coming to rest right on the plate. Invariably, those balls are called foul.
Secondly, there was a play the other day in which a high infield pop was hit in front of the 3B right on the line with the wind blowing all over the place. The 3B strolled into foul ground and then began drifting back towards fair territory. She stepped over the line and then the ball drifted back into foul ground. She reached clearly across the line, into foul gropund by about 2 feet, and just barely missed catching the ball. It hit the outside of her mitt. What was the call? You got it. "Fair ball!" That was obviously wrong and the defensive coach argued it but the ump would not back down. He was the only person in the park who thought it was fair.
A friend wrote in to tell me of a play in which a ball struck fair ground and then bounced towards foul territory and was grabbed by a 3B who was well in front of the bag and entirely in foul ground. The call? Fair ball. When this call was argued, the umpire stated with the utmost sincerity that once a ball strikes fair ground, it must touch the ground foul or it remains fair. That is absurd.
Let's say that a grounder is hit down the third base line. If that ball bounces up hard enough and passes the bag on the foul side of third, it becomes foul at the moment it passes the bag in foul ground. It is not foul because it lands on the second hop in foul ground and then remains there. Similarly, if it passes over any point in the bag or to the field side of the bag, it matters not a whit whether it comes down in foul ground thereafter. It is a fair ball.
There is no verbiage in any rulebook with which I am familiar which contains any sort of "establishment clause" with regards to fair and foul balls. There is no requirement that a once fair ball strike anything in foul ground before it can be called foul. The reason that has been conveniently left out of any rulebook is because it would make a travesty of the game. If a bunter bunted a ball which struck fair ground, including the plate, and then bounced back to the catcher who caught it on one hop, it would presumably be fair under such a clause. But it is not. It is foul.
Likewise, a player trying to make a catch on a ball in foul ground has no requirement to establish her body in foul ground in order for the ball to be ruled foul. Say a RF was chasing a line drive which curved ever so slightly into foul territory. She raced to the line and made a play on the ball right as she stepped on the chalk line (which, again, is in fair territory), reached across into foul ground and just barely tipped the ball. Does her presence in fair territory make the ball fair? No, it is foul because it was foul before she touched it. A player cannot do anything to make a foul ball fair.
There are othert bad calls and misapplications of rules I have witnessed lately but I want to stick with these fair foul calls and add just one more somewhat related item to today's discussion. Recently, a game was played on your average field. The field contained a backstop. Where the backstop ended on each side, there were gaps which players used to take the field or step up to bat and then behind the gap were fences which extended a little past the bases. As a general matter, in such a layout, the baseline fences are considered to be in play. That is, when a ball comes to rest next to the fence or bounces against it, the ball remains in play or live. If the ball goes past the fence or crosses beyond the gaps, it is out of play or dead.
This sort of circumstance regarding in and out of play is generally discussed and decided at the pre-game "ground rules" meeting between umpires, coaches, and team captains. In the absence of a specific discussion regarding this, one would expect the generally accepted rule to apply. In other words, unless some modification to the general rule were created by somebody, a ball which strikes the baseline fence or comes to rest next to it should be in play.
The other day I saw an umpire who was either extremely confused or under the weather. A play was made on a girl running home and the ball bounced off the catcher and to her side. The ball rolled over to the second fence where the pitcher, backing up the play, picked it up. The third base coach came in immediately to argue with the ump. He claimed that the ball should be out of play because it went past the pole of the backstop. That is ridiculous but this ump actually bought into the idea. he ruled the ball was dead and all runners should be allowed to advance one base. That ruling sent the game into extra innings. During those extra innings, again the same thing happened and the umpire again ruled the ball dead once the same 3B coach came in and reminded him of this rule! This rather incorrect understanding of in and out of play ground determined the outcome of that game.
By the way, all of the errant fair and foul rulings I have seen or heard about recently had material impact on the outcome of the games in which they were made. Sometimes coaches carry around rabbit-eared rulebooks which are left open to areas of arcane rules in regards to DP/Flex and other such "important" things. Most of the time, coaches are studying the arcane rules because they are confuse and the coach wants to get them down. Sometimes coaches aren't even sure where in a rulebook one would find anything about fair and foul balls. This stuff is easy, right? I would no sooner carry around an ASA rulebook so I could point to sections while arguing fair and foul balls than I would carry around my first grade math book in case I had to add two numbers together. It almost seems silly. But if you are on the losing end of one of these calls, you will really wish you had something in hand to show the umpire why it is that he was wrong.Labels: rules, umpiring
 
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