Minor league teams fight during walk-off homer

Two Class A teams in the California League battle after guy hits walk-off homer, then showboats around the bases:

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/blog/big_league_stew/post/Fight-Minor-league-walkoff-trot-turns-into-post?urn=mlb,245755

Two things that I noticed:

1. That is some awful music playing in the background after the homer.

2. The hitter's teammates use their hands to guide him to home plate. Couldn't that technically be considered helping the runner? I remember when McGwire hit No. 62, there was some talk that the first base coach nearly botched things up when McGwire missed first base.

 

Yep, I would have called him out for interference. Triple and no run scored or RBI.

Then I would have suspended the asshole for a week for his complete lack of sportsmanship by taunting as he rounded the bases.

 

Would that make you feel better making yourself a part of the game when you don't have to be? The umps handled it fine.

 

Rules are rules. They broke the rules when they helped the runner to the plate.

 

If you are an ump, that type of attitude is as much what's wrong with the game as the actions taken by those teams.

So, would you call interference on the the others teams pitcher for making contact with the runner? If rules are rules the interference happened before the help and would he not be awarded home?

 

And every major leaguer who throws his helmet before he crosses the plate breaks the rules as well. You wanna be the ump who calls them all out for throwing the helmet?

One more reason these childish celebrations have to be stopped.

 

That song's a classic.

And, since the game is being played in Bakersfield, it's entirely appropriate.

 

Couldn't fully hear it. It just sounded weird hearing a country-music sounding song playing at the end of a game in a California ballpark.

 

Well, Bakersfield has a pretty special place in the history of country music, thanks to guys like Merle Haggard and Buck Owens.

 

The home-run hitter should have been ejected on the spot -- as he was rounding the bases between second and third -- when he began directly taunting the opposing players.

The ball was dead (it became dead when it went over the fence) therefore his actions constituted flagrant unsportsmanlike conduct during a dead-ball period.

Credited with a double, the last base he legally reached.

Pump your fists in the air, point to the sky, pound your chest, CELEBRATE all you want. The second you start finger-pointing and jaw-flapping at the opponents, bang-zoom, instant ejection.

 

I covered the first rehab start for Orel Hershiser after his surgery. It was at Bakersfield. I talked to the first guy in line to get in -- he got there the night before -- and he said that having Hershiser pitching there was the biggest thing to happen to Bakersfield since the George Strait concert.

 

I believe the rule is that the ball has to be live for an interference call, or an assistance call, let me check ... yep: from decisions on the rules:

So now the batter hits a full grand-slam 6.09(d) homerun. While rounding third the base coach physically stops his progress and makes him return to third base and touch it. Is the batter-runner out for being assisted? The surprising answer is NO and the reasoning is :

on a homerun the ball is dead. This is verifiable because rule 5.02 lists a homerun as an act that took place while the ball "was alive." Therefore it must no longer "be alive."
when a ball is dead (Rule 5.02)
no player may be put out
no bases may be run
no runs may be scored
except as the result of acts that occurred while the ball was live.
the umpire is instructed to, under rule 7.05(a), let the batter-runner "without liability to be put out advance: (a). To home base, scoring a run ..."
Since the assisting call is interference it therefore must be a "live ball" infraction. For rule 7.09(i) to be applied the ball must be alive at the time of the infraction. Once a homerun is awarded you can call the runner out for: failure to touch a base (on appeal when the new ball is made live), passing a runner, running the bases in reverse order, or abandoning the base paths. Even if the team placed the runner on their shoulders and carried him from base to base, making sure each base is legally touched, score the run.