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Chalk it up Baseball draws the line at batter encroachment
NEW YORK (AP) -- Baseball is a game of inches, and that includes the ones where the batter can stand. Just to make sure everyone is clear on that, umpires have started ordering obliterated batter's boxes to be redrawn by grounds crews in the middle of games. On Saturday, Boston's Carl Everett reacted violently to a lesson in crossing the lines administered by umpire Ronald Kulpa, twice making contact with the ump after Kulpa retraced the batter's box at Fenway Park for the hitter's benefit. A day earlier, New York Mets reliever Dennis Cook was ejected from a game for hitting Everett and then suggesting that the Red Sox slugger might not have been plunked if he had stayed where he belonged, inside the batter's box. But who could see the batter's box at that point? The chalk lines were long gone, erased by seven innings worth of players pawing away at them. Now, while Everett waits to hear how much his temper tantrum will cost him in games and money, baseball has decided to make things simpler. Sandy Alderson, executive vice president for operations in the commissioner's office, reminded the umps this week that they can have the lines spruced up in the middle of the game. It happened Monday night in Baltimore, where home plate umpire Angel Hernandez ordered fresh lines painted in the fourth and seventh innings. The rule book is clear: The batter's box is 4 feet wide and 6 feet long -- plenty of room, it would seem, to find a place to stand. There are 6 inches between the edge of home plate and the inside of the box, a sort of no-man's land designed to keep the hitter off the plate at least a little bit. That's the disputed distance that got Everett in trouble. "Our interpretation is, his foot cannot be closer than six inches to the plate," crew chief Randy Marsh said after Kulpa decided that Everett was anchored inside that demilitarized zone. The message is: don't step over the lines. Just to make sure, they'll be freshened up midway through the game, the same way the grounds crew drags the infield. Then there is the matter of the catcher's box, which is supposed to be 43 inches wide and 8 feet from the back of home plate to its back border. Hernandez cracked down on that, too. "He was tight on both of us," Orioles catcher Charles Johnson said. "He was watching the other catcher, too. He gave me a warning, told me to make sure to keep my foot in the box. He watched me the whole time." Johnson said it was a new experience for him. "I can't remember anything like that," he said. "I guess they're just breaking down on catchers coming out of the box. I know a catcher sometimes comes out of the box when you have two strikes on the hitter, or if you want to pitch around a guy you go out a little farther than normal. That's what they're looking for." During an Atlanta-Milwaukee game last month, TBS aired video showing the catcher's box was 4 to 5 inches smaller than it had been the previous night, when Milwaukee complained about where Braves catcher Javy Lopez was setting up. Could the Braves have been providing a little extra help for their pitchers by creating a wider catcher's box to increase the chances of an outside pitch being called a strike? Atlanta management was not amused at the video evidence and responded by temporarily barring the broadcasters from team charter flights.
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