What's the right call ?

A balk in high school is a automatic dead ball (speaking of baseball) time is called by blue and the runners advance....no pitch.

A balk in babe ruth and most TB orgs. is a delayed dead ball. reason being, the coach may want the double or HR his batter got instead of the balk.

On most delayed dead balls the ump with the call will indicate that he has a call by holding a fisted right hand straight out to his side. when the play is over he will tell what happen and as someone else stated "sort out the mess".

Fielder obstruction is a DELAYED DEADBALL as noted in the rule above. This is why ruling #1 would be the way I ruled it.

 

Doesn't make sense to me that anything other than ruling #2 would be correct. The runner interfered with the ss making a force play at home. Dead ball! Delayed dead ball needs a different name; doesn't make any sense--dead should be dead!

I've seen many plays where the ump extends his arm in a fist and made a call based on what happened and the effect it had but it has always been a true dead ball play when a runner runs into a fielder making a play on the ball. And that makes the most sense.

 

The call in #1 was INTERFERENCE not obstruction. Obstruction is called on defense and interference is called on offense. If the SS had blocked the runner then that would be obstruction and a delayed dead ball would be called.

 

A delayed dead ball means the ball will be dead as soon as something happens. Normally the ball isn't dead as a play ends and it's thrown back ot the pitcher and the next pitch is thrown. A delayed dead ball means that something has happened that needs to be sorted, but it's something the defense did wrong, and the offense should have a chance to get the best result possible. Therefore, play continues until a predefined something happens (like when an obstructed runner gets tagged out), then the umpires step in and sort it out.

The arm extended means delayed dead ball. Hands up over the head means [immediate] dead ball. The hands should go up on interference, one arm out on obstruction (and the other cases cited above).

Had an ump stick his arm out for a clearcut job of a runner hitting the SS while fielding the ball. Waited until the play ended then called interference. After the inning I had a quiet conversation with him. I asked him wasn't the outstreached arm DDB? He said yes. Then I asked him why didn't he call an immediate dead ball for the interference. He said "That's why I'm on this side of the fence and you're on that side."

In any case, as has been said many times by now. Interference on runner, runner is out, other runners return. If the umpire believes that the interference was a deliberate attempt to prevent a double play, the runner closest to home goes too.