Again I step into unfamiliar waters. A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the infield fly rule in baseball, and now I will attempt to offer some insight into the balk rule.

This comes about because over the weekend I watched a couple of overzealous blues call eight balks in a pair of lower-division high school baseball games.

Only 12 total innings were played, and the calls were on five different pitchers from three different teams.

Basically, the balk rule exists to prevent a pitcher from gaining an advantage over a baserunner by faking either a pitch or a throw to a base, though the pitcher may fake a throw to either second or third base.

In other words, a pitcher may not fake a pitch to the plate and then throw to a base and may not fake a throw to a base then pitch to the plate. If he starts the motion to pitch to the plate, he must complete that action &045; and the same if he starts a throw to a base.

A pitcher may fake a throw to second or third base while he is on the pitching rubber but may not fake a throw to first unless he is not on the rubber. A pitcher may throw to a base if he is in his wind up but may not interrupt his wind up to make that throw.

A pitcher does not have to step off the rubber to throw to any base, but under some rules if he steps off, throws to a base and the ball goes out of play (maybe over a fence or into a dugout) the runners may advance two bases instead of the single base allowed if the pitcher was on the rubber.

Also, under some rules, the ball does not become automatically dead when a balk is called by an umpire.

If, for instance, the pitch is completed and the batter gets a base hit and the base runner or runners advance safely to the next base, the balk is disregarded. If the hitter were to be thrown out, then the balk call would stand, the ball would be dead before the pitch, the base runner or runners would move up a base and the batter would remain at the plate.

I do not know if this is the case in high school rules and would like to find out. The umpires in the high school games I saw Saturday were both also college umpires, and nobody was real sure if they had called those balks correctly.

Of the balks called in those Saturday games, five in the first game and one in the second game sent baserunners home. All of those scores were by the losing team, so the game’s outcomes were not determined by those calls.

To summarize, the balk call is usually the result of a pitcher failing to come to a complete stop after his stretch and before his delivery. He does not have to stop at the same spot each pitch, but must only stop once.

The pitcher must step toward the base or the plate toward which he is throwing, but there is no set angle in the rules stating where he must point that leg.

Maybe this is as confusing to the average reader as it is to me, but I hope this clarifies the rule somewhat.

And that’s official.

Al Graning is a former SEC official and former Natchez resident. Reach him at

AlanWard39157@aol.com

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