Clipping:Questions about foul balls
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| Date | Sunday, May 29, 1859 |
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| Text | To the Editors of the Sunday Mercury: Will you please give your opinions to the following questions: 1st Sec. 19 says: “Players running the bases must, as much as possible, keep upon a direct line between the bases,” etc. Can a player returning to base after a foul ball or ball caught on the fly, run from third base across to first base–or must he return on the line of the bases? 2nd Again: “A foul ball requires that the ball must go into the pitcher’s hands before it is in play.” Must the pitcher be in the position designated for him at the time he pitches the ball, or can he receive the ball in any part of the field? 3d Again: after a ball is caught on the fly is the player running the bases out if the ball is held on the base he must return to, or must he be touched? Yours truly, FLY BALL. As regards the first query, our correspondent must see it is clearly wrong for a player to cross the field in the manner described. There is no difference between returning to a base, and running to make a base. The aim in both cases being the same, the same rule equally applies. Crossing the field, we should say, betrayed a very evident disposition, on the part of the player, to “avoid the ball in the hands of an adversary,” and is, therefore, “contrary to law.” In reply to query No. 2, the Rule (No. 16) does not provide that the pitcher, at the time he receives a foul ball, shall be at his designated point. We think that such is the intention. The Rule, previous to its recent amendment, it will be remembered, provided that the ball should not be settled in the hands of the pitcher, but pitched to the striker, before the ball was in play. The ball could not be pitched to the striker, unless the pitcher were in his proper designated position. Does the amendment of the rule, doing away with the necessity of pitching the ball to the striker, give the pitcher a roving commission to fly to any part of the field to receive a dead ball, in order to head off a returning player? We should say not. In case a foul ball is struck, out of the reach of the pitcher, he should seek his post in order to receive the ball, and then pass it to the bases; or, in the event of the pitcher stopping a foul ball, he should reach his post before deliver the ball to the bases. For an answer to the third query, we refer our correspondent to the Mercury of Sunday, May 22. A player must always be touched by the ball while in play in the hands of an adversary, in order to be put out, except in the instance provided in Rule 14, wherein it is expressly stated that if the ball is held by an adversary on the first base, before the striker touches that base, the player is out. In every other instance, the player must be touched by the ball. [In the following issue it was pointed out that force plays also did not require the runner be touched with the ball.] |
| Source | New York Sunday Mercury |
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| Comment | Edit with form to add a comment |
| Query | Edit with form to add a query |
| Submitted by | Richard Hershberger |
| Origin | Initial Hershberger Clippings |
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