Current Events > Question for baseball fans

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Let's say a ball is hit and goes straight back, above the netting behind home plate and into the crowd. Obviously that would be a foul. But if the catcher manages to stick his hand through the netting and catch the ball, is it still foul because it went over the net, or out since it was caught?

That would probably be an out....if it happened.

I don't know whether they have a specific rule against it (assuming the ball does not touch the netting nor any other part of the stadium at all), but I don't think it's realistically possible - the netting is much too small to get a hand through, and I'd imagine they wouldn't leave any spots big enough along where it's secured to the fence/posts. Also think some if not all are angled up towards an upper deck so it couldn't come straight down on the other side close enough.

If it was caught, the batter would be out.

a catcher in a professional game would never bother to try to dangerously shove their arm into the tiny netting to get one single out

but yes if he caught it, it'd be an out

They wouldn't even be able to bring the ball back into play so I'd think it would just be a dead ball even if it miraculously didn't touch any part of the net. Any runners on base could take advantage of that if it wasn't.

if there's no rule covering it (and, in my quick searchings, i don't see one), then i have to guess that the netting is engineered to make such a play impossible.

and if it's only possible once in a million times, i'd guess the umps would just default to a foul ball, with the assumption that it would have had to hit the netting (even if it didn't)