Who's on Third?

[silverscreenselect]

Lb will like this one. The Giants-Dodgers game last night involved a rare occurrence involving baseball rules. The Giants led 1-0 in the top of the ninth inning, but the Dodgers had runners on second (Corey Seager) and third (Justin Turner) with one out. The batter grounded to second base, who threw home. Instead of trying to beat the throw at the plate, which would have been futile, Turner headed back to third and the catcher, Buster Posey, followed with ball in hand. When Turner reached third, Seager was already standing on the base. Posey tagged both runners, and the umpire correctly signaled that Seager was out. (Under baseball rules, the lead runner is legally entitled to the base until he touches the next base.) Everyone was confused, and both runners wandered off the base. Posey tagged Seager again, which didn't accomplish anything since he was already out, and Turner managed to get back to third base safely before Posey could tag him (he had only taken one step off the base). If Posey had tagged Turner first, the game would have been over. You can see this play at about the seven minute mark on the highlights below.

Given a reprieve, the next Dodgers hitter got a base hit, tying the game, but the Giants eventually won in extra innings. The ending of the game is also something to watch, as the Giants scored the winning run on a throwing error by the second baseman on a routine ground ball that should have been the third out of the inning but pulled the first baseman (barely) off the bag.

[Bob78164]

The Giants led 1-0 in the top of the ninth inning, but the Dodgers had runners on second (Corey Seager) and third (Justin Turner) with one out. . . . Under baseball rules, the lead runner is legally entitled to the base until he touches the next base.

To be precise, I think that's only the case in a non-force situation, which this was. --Bob

[littlebeast13]

The Giants led 1-0 in the top of the ninth inning, but the Dodgers had runners on second (Corey Seager) and third (Justin Turner) with one out. . . . Under baseball rules, the lead runner is legally entitled to the base until he touches the next base.

To be precise, I think that's only the case in a non-force situation, which this was. --Bob

True, although this is unlikely to happen in a force situation, outside of confusion over whether a fly ball was caught or not.

And the two-runners-on-the-same-base situation happens enough in baseball that everyone on the field should be clear of how it works by now. Yet it almost always causes confusion between the runners and fielders over who has the right to the base... thus why it occasionally leads to easy double plays like this one almost did.

lb13

[kroxquo]

Calls to mind the old Dodgers play where they ended up with three runners on third base. It was 1926, the bases were loaded with one out. Babe Herman lined a shot to deep center. The lead runner scored but the runner on second was pitcher Dazzy Vance who was charitably called slow. The runner on first nearly passed Vance, so the third base coach tried to slow him up. However Vance, who had already rounded third, thought the coach was calling him back to third and got caught in a rundown. Meanwhile, Herman had gone into second and saw the rundown and thought it was the runner from from first and so advanced to third. Vance got out of the rundown and slid back into third leaving three Dodgers standing there. The umpires were sure two of them were out, but weren't sure which ones. They decided that Vance was entitled to the base and the other two were out, ending the inning.

This led to the old vaudeville joke - "The Dodgers have three men on base!" "Oh yeah? which one?"