We definitely had the concept of “ball beat you”, but so long as the runner wasn’t forced, they could always try to make it back to their previous base. It didn’t often work, though, because not only could the ball beat them back to their previous base as well, but they could also be thrown out. Actually, a runner could be “thrown out” without there even being a throw: Any contact between runner and ball, after the kick, was an out, even if it was just from a fluke bounce or something.
Sorry about that - I searched the thread for “invisible” but completely missed the posts about “ghost runners.”