The 25-foot triple

If you weren't at Consol Energy Park last night in the eighth inning, you missed a bizarre play that resulted in the umpires enforcing a rarely applied rule and River City coming away with a triple on a sacrifice bunt.

Here's what happened:

River City, leading 7-4, had runners on first and second with no outs and Andy Reilly at the plate. It's an obvious bunting situation.

Reilly put down a perfect bunt that traveled roughly 25 feet (maybe not even that far) up the third-base line, into the grass. Washington third baseman Michael Parker charged and tried to scoop the ball with his glove. Parker snow-coned the ball and it end up shooting out the top of the glove, back toward the dirt area around home plate, to the right-hand side of Washington catcher Alan Robbins.

Robbins was holding his catcher's mask in his right hand, and in an instinctive move reached down with his mask to stop the ball. It was sorta like a hockey goalie making a quick-reaction glove save. Robbins then scooped the ball up in the mask.

When play was stopped, the umpiring crew of Jeremy Stangelo (plate) and Matt Neador (bases) advanced both runners to home plate and sent Reilly to third base. The rule they were enforcing was 7.05 B:

Each runner including the batter-runner may, without liability to be put out, advance three bases, if a fielder deliberately touches a fair ball with his cap, mask or any part of his uniform detached from its proper place on his person. The ball is in play and the batter may advance to home base at his peril.

You can make a strong case that Robbins didn't deliberately stop the baseball with his mask, but there was no doubt he intentionally scooped it up with the mask.

So how do you score the play? A check of the rulebook showed it was a triple, based on Rule 10.07 E:

... score a (triple) when the batter-runner is awarded three bases under the provision of Rule 7.05.

So there you have it, a 25-foot triple.