Rarely seen rule helps Shohei Ohtani hit Little League homer…
Shohei Ohtani wasn’t precisely positive what occurred with the ball he hit down the proper discipline line on Saturday night time at Angel Stadium.
With confusion abounding, the Dodgers’ two-way star had only one focus.
The Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani scores on an inside-the-park residence run Saturday against the Angels. AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill
“I just kept running,” he said in an on-field postgame interview by way of an interpreter.
Good factor, too.
In the top of the eighth inning of the Dodgers’ 15-2 drubbing of the Angels, Ohtani hit a Little League residence run — a triple that he then scored on by way of an error — with the assist of a hardly ever seen application of certainly one of MLB’s common ballpark floor guidelines.
On the play, Ohtani’s 89.7 mph line drive landed deep in the proper discipline nook, took one big hop just inside the foul line, then bounced over the low wall in foul floor at Angel Stadium.
Only, the ball never really left the discipline of play.
Instead, it hit the protecting netting that extends practically all the way down to the right-field foul pole (a new addition at Angel Stadium this yr) and ricocheted again onto the discipline as Ohtani chugged round the bases.
By the time proper fielder Jo Adell retrieved it — after initially elevating his arms, evidently considering the ball ought to have been useless — Ohtani was already pulling into third base.
Things only received worse from there for the Angels. Adell fired a relay throw that received past two cut-off males on the fringe of the infield. With nobody else in place to again it up, the ball trickled towards the mound as Ohtani raced residence to score without a throw.
“Just a Little League home run,” supervisor Dave Roberts said afterward. “It was good to see him hustle.”
“I turned around and [saw] Shohei was coming home, and I’m like, ‘what happened?’” added Alex Call, certainly one of two runners on base who initially scored on the play, “I didn’t find out until later. But I guess, yeah, the ball’s in play there.”
Ohtani raced round the bases and wound up scoring on an inside-the-park residence run. AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill
As soon as Ohtani slid across the plate, the Angels nonetheless started interesting to the umpires about the affect of the protecting netting. Manager Kurt Suzuki even challenged the ruling after strolling out of the dugout, explaining later that “we thought maybe a fan might have it” from behind the display screen.
“That was a tough one, obviously,” he said in his postgame news convention. “Before the nets were [installed] down the line, that ball bounces into the stands and it’s two bases.”
Instead, video replay confirmed the preliminary name.
And amid all the mayhem, a highlight was positioned on certainly one of the common floor guidelines that applies in all MLB ballparks:
“A live ball (batted, thrown or otherwise) striking any screen or protective netting set on the field facing a wall or railing (e.g., a backstop or protective netting along the first or third base line) and rebounding onto the field is live and in play,” according to a piece of guidelines on MLB’s web site.
“The netting, if it hits, it’s in play, so that wasn’t a question,” Roberts said. “I didn’t really know what they were challenging, but no, we weren’t concerned about that.”
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