Force play slide rule: when it costs two outs

No rulebook requires a runner to slide, at second or anywhere else. What the runner can’t do is get in the way of the fielder making the play. That’s where the rulebooks split.

Let’s use a common example. There’s a ground ball with a runner on first, and the shortstop flips to second. Your runner goes in standing up. The second baseman’s throw to first sails, and the batter is safe. Now the other coach is yelling for a double play.

Will he get it? It depends on whose weekend it is.

High school, Perfect Game, and any event that uses the high school book. This is the strict one. On a force play, the runner has three legal choices. He can slide straight into the bag. He can slide away from the fielder. Or he can peel off, meaning run away from the base and out of the play. If he does none of those and makes contact with the fielder, or changes what the fielder does, that’s interference. The runner is out, and the batter-runner is out too.

Intent doesn’t matter. The fielder doesn’t even have to throw. If he holds the ball because the runner was standing in his throwing lane, the runner altered the play, and that’s enough. A slide that goes past the bag, through the fielder or with a leg up is illegal even if the runner meant well. It gets the same penalty.

USSSA, Little League, and other travel ball on the pro rules. These are looser. Going in standing up isn’t an out by itself, and neither is contact. For the runner to be out, he has to interfere with the play. For the batter-runner to be out too, the runner has to interfere on purpose, with the obvious intent of breaking up the double play (rolling into the fielder’s legs, grabbing him or sliding well past the bag to take him out). A player who went in standing and got hit by the throw is usually just a player who got hit by the throw.

The peel-off is legal everywhere, and hardly anyone teaches it.

The runner sees he’s dead at second and veers off toward the outfield — he never gets near the fielder. He has to peel away far enough that he neither contacts the fielder nor interferes with the play. I know a lot of us hate it as coaches, because it looks like quitting. But it’s the only sure way to protect the batter.

So what should your runner do? I’d teach him to slide straight in, on the ground, feet first and early. Even in the rulebooks that allow a runner to go in standing up, he’s handing the umpire a judgment call that can go against you.