Expert: Brian Flaspohler - 10/12/2007

Question
Brian, I'm having a disagreement with a friend of mine on scoring hits and errors. Would you say a shortstop diving for a ground ball up the middle, or an outfielder coming in and sliding to make a catch "ordinary efforts"? One of us say if the fielders glove touches the ball in anyway, it is an error. The other says these are extra-ordinary efforts and should be awarded base hits.
Thanks.

Answer
Dennis,

This is one of those things that falls into the realm of scorer's judgement.  The official scorer must make a determination if the play would have been made by an ordinary effort of the fielder.

Everyone has a different opinion.  I would not say that a sliding or diving play is necessarily one way or the other - it just depends.  Kind of 'you know it when you see it'

Pretty lame answer I know, but that is one of the oddities of the baseball rule book.

Brian