Oakland Park Baseball

Hey, we had our first real collision at home plate last game.

Nick W. came crusing in to home plate and crushed the catcher Mike C.

Before I let my influential opinion be known about this, what are people's thoughts about that play and it's implications?

I think it's customary for "leagues" such as Defremery to have a No Contact rule. Here is what SFNABA uses:

1.“No Contact Rule” - This rule mainly pertains to situations at second base and home plate. Players running the bases MUST slide in close play situations such as double plays at second and throws home. The base runner must concede the out and not “take out” the fielder. Head first slides are always scrutinized and are generally not a good idea. Incidental contact will certainly still occur but on obvious plays, runners who do not concede will be penalized up to banishment from the NABA. Fielders are also held accountable for such things as “faking out” a base runner. Players may not pretend to be in the action of catching or throwing a ball or stand on or in the way of a base runners natural basepath. The fielder must concede the base to a runner if they to not posses the ball and make an attempt to tag the runner. These plays are closely watched not only by the players and managers, but are actionable by the umpires. Umpires may take whatever action they deem necessary, up to throwing a player out of a game. Further action may be taken by the league president, up to banishment from the NABA. Play it safe.

A couple of options for home plate could be for

1. Place an alternative home plate for runners to run to if it looks like there may be a collision.

2. Have a committ line between 3rd and home, and if a runner crosses it, it becomes a forced play. (If you wanted to be really conservative this same concept could be applied at other bases--although I think that may be an over-kill)

Most softball leagues use a combination of the 2 as well. Also, for the same reason, many also place another base next to 1B for the runner to run to.

Another option could be a rule that in the event of a collision in which a ball is knocked out of a catcher's hand, it would be an automatic out, and, if the catcher is injured, it ends the inning. This may force the runner to be a little more careful.

As far as forcing runners to slide, I think thats a bad idea. Its probably unsafe for those of us who either really dont know how to properly slide, or can't afford to get all scraped up (for work purposes). Or otherwise dont want to slide. Of course in that case common sense dictates that you dont go barrelling into a baseman.

Its probabvly also worth mentioning that we're not professionals, or playing in a league where there may be consequences for not winning at all costs. These are essentually a recreational pickup games which are played for fun and developing skills (and sometimes satisfying an addiction).

You can't encourage catchers to block the plate and then tell runners that they can't run through...

not that anyone but me has encouraged catchers to block the plate, but that doesn't make the point any less valid.

Nick told me that he did try to bail once he saw Mike dropped the ball be he was already too close and he was coming too hard.

I say we should use MLB rules as much as we can (i.e. allow collisions). All this really means is the person assigned to play catcher needs to be aware/prepared for this type of thing to happen.

I don't think it's fair to tell the runner that he has to take a longer path to the plate when it's already going to be a very close play.

I mostly agree with Ken. I would suggest that we adopt the following rules:

1. No all out smashes. This is to say, no body chucks. No running over the catcher.

2. A baserunner can remain upright while trying to score. This is important, because a player may be trying to avoid a tag, and its better not to slide.

3. A baserunner can slide feet first or dive head first. Either way, the baserunner is allowed to be as physical as he needs to be to score.

I don't think what Peter is offering is workable. What's the legitimate amount of contact? Because what you're offering is just #1, your #'s 2 & 3 are just saying standard MLB, anything goes. So, focusing on #1, what's a runover, what's not? There are all sorts of contact, it's totally subjective.

And I don't see how being upright would be necessary to avoid a tag, see my comments below about avoiding the tag with slides.

Ok, so here's what I think... By the way, I was kidding when I labelled my viewpoint as 'influential'.

I umpired all ages for many years. The rule that was in place in several leagues I ump'd in was simply:

MUST SLIDE TO AVOID CONTACT OR YOU'RE OUT

so, if there's no contact, no slide necessary

Thus, if you are avoiding the tag upright and you pull it off, you're safe. But if in avoiding the tag upright you make contact, you're out for not sliding.

You can whizz past the catcher at full speed upright as long as you don't contact him. You only need to slide if the catcher is there with the ball and you're going to collide. At that point, and only at that point, is it then necessary to slide.

Lincoln makes a fair point when he says "Incidental contact will certainly still occur but on obvious plays, runners who do not concede" will be banished. Of course, for us it would be that they are out. Also, he points out that this applies to not running over the middle infielder at 2nd base when he's trying to turn a double play. Think about it, you want to slide or you can get hit in the face with the throw to first! Going back to plays at the plate...

You watch for the on-deck batter who's standing behind home plate facing the field. He can see whether it will be close, ie whether a slide will be necessary. If he's motioning down with both hands, slide.

And you can definitely avoid the tag, even if the catcher is there, with a good slide. If he is getting the ball even slightly late, go in under his legs and under the tag. If he's blocking, then you need to do an evasive slide, such as a hook slide. Slide to the side of home plate away from the catcher but arm's length to the back of home plate. Reach back with your hand and catch the back of the plate as you evade the tag and slide past the catcher. Or you can do the same motion headfirst. Either way, do it on the side of the plate with the least coverage by the catcher.

The on-deck batter should always be in position to make the call for the runner coming in from 3rd.

I think this will rarely result in an out, if at all. Most people who don't want to slide are likely not to be sent from 3rd anyway on a close play. And colliding with the catcher is going to result in more damage than sliding will.

NOTE: if you do a headfirst slide, you MUST do it away from the catcher, ie at a full arm's length away from where he's standing at home plate. The headfirst hook slide is only for advanced sliders. Doing it wrong can really hurt you. Use the evasive normal slide I described first unless you have that totally down and are comfortable enough to go for the headfirst slide.

Finally, and I know I always post these really long posts (sorry), but Nick, who initially had been in favor of standard MLB rules with collisions allowed, has backpedalled on that by now I bet because he hurt himself in the collision. I haven't talked to him, but I know he messed up his knee on the collison.

It will be interesting to hear Nick and Mike C's views on this.

Basicly, I think people should be able to slide as hard as they want. I don't wanna do any of the multiple home plates, or stuff like that. The more we can keep this to real baseball with our already lax rules, the better.

i really don't see the problems with stand-up plays at the plate.

you shouldn't play catcher if you don't think you could take it and if you don't think you can take it as a runner, you'll obviously slide.

retep wrote:Basicly, I think people should be able to slide as hard as they want.

Yeah, my recommendation provides that people can slide as hard as they want. Did you read it, dude? I know it's long, what can I say...... I'm verbose.

As for Kenyatte... I hear ya on "don't play catcher if you think you can't take [getting runover]". That's a reasonable viewpoint, unless we end up not having people willing to play catcher, of course!

On something else you said, though, you said you don't see problems of people coming un standing up at the plate..... you know we're talking about contact & the catcher getting runover, right? And you could see the drawbacks to that, yes? Coming in standing up is no problem if you don't runover the catcher (ie only have incidental contact), as provided by my explanation. I'm only referring to those situations when you do run him down.

Got ya, Scott! For some reason, I read your post wrong.

I beg for thy's forgivness

As somebody who has played football, rugby, and catcher, I don't mind contact. Maybe we just let the catcher declare whether contact is allowed or not. Default (silence) is that it's allowed.

What I don't like is that the defensive team doesn't pitch, and we don't call balls and strikes. That makes the game so slow-moving. In Berkeley, we allowed 5 balls. That made up for the amateur pitching. Of course, this is a different topic...

Lincoln wrote:Maybe we just let the catcher declare whether contact is allowed or not. Default (silence) is that it's allowed.

Excellent idea!

And if the catcher declares no contact, he should not be allowed to aggressively block the basepaths, because that would simply be unfair!

Baseball=Life wrote:
On something else you said, though, you said you don't see problems of people coming un standing up at the plate..... you know we're talking about contact & the catcher getting runover, right? And you could see the drawbacks to that, yes?

Yes, scott- I know what the discussion is about. I'm sorry if my slightly abstract verbs were too confusing

Just as a side note, I think Nick got as hurt as Mike did on that play, so it's not just the saftey of the catcher we're talking about.

I also think that most of us are smart enough to realize that if we start playing a hard, physical, run over everyone type of game, it'll start being not so fun.

And lastly, on a similar note, how would we deal with something like a runner sliding into second to take the SS or 2B out from making a throw to first on a double play?

My awnser to all this would be just play smart. Don't be a jerk, for the most part you should be able to see if you can avoid a dirty situation or not. Once in a while we'll have some fluke thing happen, like Mike and Nick's collision, or something smaller like me accidently hitting Chris in the face (not that hard) while trying to apply a tag at 2nd. I know we're all competative, but we should all realize that the possiblity of us hurting someone with our actions is just not cool.

TheLegend wrote:

Lincoln wrote:Maybe we just let the catcher declare whether contact is allowed or not. Default (silence) is that it's allowed.

Excellent idea!

I concur. So then the two options that the catcher has to choose from are A) no contact, ie my suggestion of having to "slide to avoid contact" or you're out; or B) normal MLB rules, ie contact of any sort is allowed.

TheLegend wrote: And if the catcher declares no contact, he should not be allowed to aggressively block the basepaths, because that would simply be unfair!

I disagree, and I think we're not communicating on this. You can easily do an evasive slide at home to get around the catcher/tag blocking the plate. Please, kind sir, reread my post about how these slides work. It's actually really fun to pull off one of these evasive slides. You could totally do it. In fact it's one of the most exciting possible plays in baseball.