My brother, my father, and I were talking this past weekend, and somehow the topic of the movie “The Bad News Bears” came up. We got to talking about one unusual play, and we wondered how this play would be scored officially. The play, in case you haven’t seen the movie–and even if you have–went like this:
The Bears were playing their arch-rivals, the Yankees. The Yankees’ pitcher was also the coach’s son. After one close pitch to the Bears’ batter, a rather large boy named Engelbert, the coach came out to the mound and yelled at, then hit, his son. The son was obviously angered and embarrassed by this. During the same at-bat, Engelbert grounded the ball back to this pitcher. To get some sort of revenge on his father, though, the pitcher merely held onto the ball, not throwing it to first base. In fact, he held onto it for a good minute or two, despite his teammates’ trying to get it away from him, allowing Engelbert to rumble all the way around the bases and score.
So how would this play be scored? We have three ideas:
Home run. I find this choice unlikely.
Fielder’s choice, as the pitcher chose not to throw the ball.
I don’t know much about baseball, but why shouldn’tthe batter have taken the bases. It was a grounder, so it wasn’t an automatic out having been caught. Since the pitcher didn’t do his job, didn’t throw to the first baseman, why shouldn’t the runner continue?
Also, would the coach/father get kicked out of the game for hitting a player, even (or especially( if the player was his son?
Defensive indifference occurs when the team in the field chooses not to attempt to put out a runner because whether or not the runner advances has no bearing on the outcome of the game. This is not the case in the scenario under discussion.
First off, it’s not an error. An error only counts as an accidental misplay - fumbling the ball, a wild throw, whatever. Deliberately holding onto the ball too long is not an error.
It would be scored a home run. There was no error and the player rounded the bases. A fielder’s choice would only be a possibility if they tried to get a preceding runner out. They didn’t.
The more I think about it, the more it seems to me that different scorers might score this differently. The difference may lie in whether or not a scorer judges that, at the time of the play, the runner’s advance had an immediate bearing on the result of the game. Clearly, whether or not a runner’s advance has a bearing on the result of the game will always depend on whether further runs are scored or not: what is relevant is the judgment of the scorer at the time of the play itself. You may be right. If nothing else, it may be that different scorers would score the play differently.
But this certainly is not a homerun, since the run is not earned. No scorer would choose to allow such a run to count against the pitcher, even if the pitcher is the one holding the ball, since the runner’s advances and the scored run are not the result of the pitcher qua pitcher.
I recall a case in the Majors a couple years ago when a player (the pitcher?) held onto the ball to argue a call with an umpire about a runner being safe. The runner continued to move around the bases and scored. It was ruled “defensive indifference”.
Can anybody recall more and do a Google? (I can’t think of a term to narrow it down from mundane scoring.)
So I suspect a similar ruling in TBNB would be the same.
It is not an error. Rule 10.13(1) clearly states that slow handling of a ball without misplay is not an error.
It is not a fielder’s choice, as the fielder is not choosing to make another play, nor is this defensive indifference. Defensive indifference is when it doesn’t matter to the defense what happens. In this case it does matter to the defense what happens, even if they have a traitor on the field.
The proper scoring call is “home run.” I personally think it SHOULD be an error, but the rule is quite clear.
