You’re the official scorer. How do you score that? Justifiable 4-base error?
3-base error on the first baseman?Justifiable 4-base error?
The throw was good, and if caught, the baserunner would have been tagged out. So even without the runner advancing, it was one error just to allow him to remain on the base path.But my point was that in the whole stadium only the catcher and the runner were playing, or watching, baseball at that moment. They were uniquely situated to be that way; the catcher doesn’t watch the end of a swing with a baserunner to worry about, and the runner doesn’t watch the end of a swing when he’s in jeopardy of being picked off. Everyone else in the stadium saw that bat sail into the stands and was transfixed by it. The poor first baseman was uniquely situated to be the goat for doing what all but two people, out of thousands who there, were doing.
There was an episode of Andy Griffith’s sitcom on Army life which had a similar point. Two officers were driving jeeps on base, and they had a fender-bender. One officer claimed that the other hadn’t signaled, the other claimed that he did, and so they had a trial.
Andy allowed it to be known that he had information about the case, and he was called as a witness. He arranged that a friend was in the court, and that everyone got an eyeful of her - the friend, in the episode, being portrayed by a gorgeous actress.
On being pressed to say which driver had been in the right, he explained he didn’t know - but that that friend had shouted and waved to someone at the moment of the accident. And that there was no likelihood that either one of the officers knew whether the one had signaled properly, or not.
The episode ended with one of the deliberators after the hearing asking the others, “Can we rule, ‘Justifiable negligence?’"