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Home Run off of a fielder

(6 posts)
  1. DaBears
    Member

    So when a baseball is hit deep to the outfield, and the fielder runs back and it hits off of him and goes over the fence, it's a homer. To me, that makes no sense. I mean, it wasn't going over the fence but it still turned out to go over. So it should be a ground rule double or an error on the fielder and hits get like 2 or 3 bases. It's not fair if it's a homer. Anyone agree with me on this?

    Posted 2 months ago #
  2. LeeTro
    Member

    The biggest problem with your 2-3 base idea is determining if it is going to go out. If the outfielder jumps for the ball right at the top of the wall, where you're not sure if it's going out, and knocks it over, you have another judgement call for the umpires. The nearest umpire will be lucky to be with 150 feet, so that would be really hard to call, and replay would take too long.

    Posted 2 months ago #
  3. DaBears
    Member

    Yes I left that out but I believe if the outfielder jumps then hits off his glove and gets out then it's a homer as long if he's realitivily close to the fence.

    Posted 2 months ago #
  4. LeeTro
    Member

    Again, you're leaving ambiguity with "relatively close." That's why a rule like that could never be passed.

    Posted 2 months ago #
  5. j reed
    Member

    LeeTro;4870 Again, you're leaving ambiguity with "relatively close." That's why a rule like that could never be passed.

    I think that baseball is full of "relatively close"...balls and strikes for one....there's no way we have the visual acuity to simultaneously see the height of a pitch relative to a batter's arm pits and knees and where the ball is relative to the plate when the ball is travelling at speeds of 80-100 mph without making "relatively close" judgement calls. And this is a straight arrow pitch...what about pitches with lots of movement. So many pitches are called balls that are strikes because the ump judged the ball where it ended up and not where it crossed the plate relative to the height of the batter's strike zone.

    Posted 1 month ago #
  6. LeeTro
    Member

    Every sport will have plenty of judgement calls by the officials, but they usually try to keep them at a minimum. This is similar to football's forceout rule. They eliminated this judgement call, making it just a little easier to call a game. Balls, strikes, and outs will always be judgement calls, but if there's a way to eliminate them for other calls, it makes the game that much easier.

    Posted 1 month ago #

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