luv baseball posted:jdb posted:A couple of years ago in a 14U championship game we had a similar play unfold. ......
A few weeks later, I received a five second video clip, via email, from one of the parents on the catcher's team. It confirmed everything that I remembered, except the catcher was set up blocking the base path from the beginning. That said, he had the ball secured so early that the runner was three strides from him and had plenty of time to slide around the play. The runner also never slowed down or changed his path as several parents claimed...and the collision was even worse than I remembered.
This play was never legal at any level below Pro ball to my knowledge. Malicious contact is malicious contact regardless of the ball being there or not. If the runner crushed him as described - he deserved the EJ.
I actually never understood why blowing up catchers in Pro Ball was legal to begin with. You never could crush a 1B on an off line throw or an infielder in a run down but it was legal at the plate for some reason.
Agreed.
Going even a little younger, my son was playing in an 11U game, just when he began playing travel baseball, and ran into the same situation -- catcher set up up the line without the ball, but got the ball and then got absolutely blown up by the runner (who happened to be my son!!) going full speed and dropped the ball. Ump ruled that the catcher was blocking the plate and ruled the runner safe. It was either the tying run or the go-ahead run, I don't remember. Luckily, no one was injured. I thought the umpire got the call wrong -- and the fans of the opposing team really thought he got it wrong! You'd be surprised at the amount of verbal abuse that adults can hurl at an 11-year-old.
In the car on the ride home I asked my son why he didn't slide. He gave the following response: "If I slid, I would've been tagged out, and I wanted to be safe." I thought that was an honest, straightforward response -- but we then had a short, direct conversation about how he was never going to do that again (and he hasn't since).