Is home plate fair or foul?

If you’ve been around youth baseball for a while, you’ve heard it. A chopper goes straight down off the plate, and half the crowd yells “foul!” because it hit the plate. The catcher grabs it on the grass and throws to first, and the umpire calls the runner out. Now the crowd is yelling at the umpire.

The umpire’s right.

All of home plate is fair territory, the point included. The plate sits inside the lines, so a ball that hits it hasn’t really done anything yet. The umpire judges it by what it does after that.

A ball that hits home plate is judged the same way as a ball that hits the dirt in front of it.

So what makes it fair or foul? If the ball settles in fair territory before it reaches first or third, or a fielder touches it in fair territory, it’s fair. If it rolls foul and stops there, or a fielder touches it in foul territory, it’s foul. If it makes it all the way to first or third, it’s judged by where it passes the bag.

Where the fielder is standing doesn’t matter, either. His feet mean nothing here. The umpire is looking at the ball and only the ball.

The same thing applies on a bunt. A bunt that hits the plate and dribbles fair is a fair ball. Run! A bunt that hits the plate and spins foul is foul once it stops there or someone touches it there. Catchers, let it spin — don’t touch a ball that’s headed foul.

Ball off the batter. This comes up on the same kind of chopper. If the batted ball hits the batter while he’s still in the box, it’s a foul ball and the ball is dead. But if he’s out of the box in fair territory when it hits him, he’s out.