Can a coach touch a runner?
Yes -- what a coach can't do is help him. A high-five or a pat on the back is fine, but grab him, push him, hold him or pull him back to the bag, and the runner is out.
A runner rounds third on a double, and the coach slaps him on the back as he goes by. He scores. Then the other dugout starts in: “He touched him! He’s out!”
He isn’t out. A lot of coaches and parents only half remember this rule.
The rule says the runner is out if the base coach physically assists him. The important word is assists. What does that look like? The coach grabs him to stop him. He pushes him toward the plate. He pulls him back to the bag on a pickoff, or he holds him up when he’s about to fall past third. Each of those changes what the runner does, and that’s what the rule is trying to stop.
A high-five isn’t assistance. Neither is a pat on the helmet or a hand on his back as he rounds the base. Grabbing his arm to congratulate him after the play is dead is fine, too, and so is bumping into him by accident in the box. Contact by itself isn’t a violation. As coaches, we need to understand what the umpire is really deciding: Did the touch help the runner?
When it does get called, it’s almost always at third. A runner rounds the bag too far and the throw comes in. The coach grabs his jersey and yanks him back.
That’s an out even if the runner would have made it back on his own.
What happens next. The runner is out. Under pro rules and in Little League, the ball is dead right away, and other runners go back to the last base they’d reached. Under high school rules, the play finishes first. The coach is warned, and it’s an ejection if it happens again.
The home run trot is a different story. The ball is dead, so the coach can hug him, high-five him or carry him home (I wouldn’t recommend that last one). Nothing on a dead ball is assistance. The only way a runner gets out on a home run is by passing another runner, and that one has its own card.
Even so, I’d keep my hands to myself on live balls. A high-five isn’t illegal. But if the umpire sees a coach’s hand near a runner, he has to decide what it did — and you don’t want him deciding.
Which rulebook? Official Baseball Rules 6.01(a)(8): the runner is out if the base coach, by touching or holding him, physically assists him in returning to or leaving a base. NFHS 3-2-2 and Little League 7.09(h) say the same. Touching alone is not assistance under any of them.
A runner rounds third on a double. The third base coach slaps him on the back as he goes by, and he scores. Is he out?
Still have a question? Ask Coach Fungo.
“Give him a high-five as he rounds third if you want, but keep your hands off his jersey on a live ball.”
Does the pitcher have to come set before a pickoff?
The stop is required before a pitch, not before a throw to a base. From the stretch, he can lift his hands and throw to first without ever stopping, as long as he steps toward the base.
“If he steps toward first before he throws, a quick pickoff without a stop is legal.”
Tie goes to the runner: is that a rule?
There's no such thing as a tie, and no rulebook mentions one. The umpire decides which happened first, the tag or the foot, every single time.
“Umpires are trained that there is no such thing as a tie. He has to call it one way or the other.”
The rules quiz
Ten questions, two minutes. Would you have gotten the call right?
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