- May 29, 2015
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That’s obstruction and your runner should act accordingly. What are you looking for?
Very visiably slow or dodge. Yell 'look out' Do not initiate contact.What should the runner do to draw attention to the 2b in the path?
As with the rules I posted earlier, NFHS they have an out either way (ball or not), and they make it clear that if you don't leave your feet and crash that is malicious. They also have a defined malicious contact rule and penalty which allows you to make the same call if they do something different that is malicious - as it includes a dead ball and an immediate out penalty if done by the offense.
It appears I have a much different definition of "excessive force" than the umpires here, because there's lots of "if the runner makes any contact she's ejected" talk and that's just 100% wrong imo.
And since I've seen literally hundreds of examples of non-contact obstruction (most often a 1B standing on the inside corner of the bag on a ball hit to the OF) and it's never, ever been called -- not one time -- it seems like those here are basically saying the only way to get an obstruction call is to hope an infielder tackles the runner because 99.9% of the obstruction contact would be "initiated" by the base runner (since the infielder is usually just standing in the way).
No, a runner should not be allowed to just truck a defender because she's in the way, but "excessive force" pretty clearly is not "the base runner is obligated to avoid contact."