When a spectator or other person not associated with one of the teams (including such staff as bat boys or ball girls) alters play in progress, it is spectator interference, colloquially called fan interference. It is worth noting that the latter is also (incorrectly) used to refer to fan obstruction – for instance a spectator running onto the field and tackling a baserunner. The ball becomes dead, and the umpire will award any bases or charge any outs that, in his judgment, would have occurred without the interference.
Such interference often occurs when a spectator in the first row of seats reaches onto the field to attempt to grab a fair or foul fly ball. If the umpire judges that the fielder could have caught the ball over the field (i.e., the ball would have not crossed over the plane of the wall), he will rule the batter out on spectator interference. Also, the spectator who commits interference is usually ejected from the stadium. Note that spectators are allowed to catch a ball that is in play when the ball has broken the plane of the spectators' side of the wall, even if in doing so they interfere with a player who is also trying to catch the ball. In the 2003 NLCS, Steve Bartman famously hindered Moisés Alou from catching a foul ball, but because the ball had already broken the plane of the wall, it would have landed in the stands and Alou would have had to reach over the wall to get it, no interference was called. The area where both fielders and spectators are legally allowed to catch the ball is colloquially called no man's land.
Umpires typically grab their wrist above their head to signal that spectator interference has occurred.
Read more about this topic: Interference (baseball)
Famous quotes containing the words spectator and/or interference:
“However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but a spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Now for civil service reform. Legislation must be prepared and executive rules and maxims. We must limit and narrow the area of patronage. We must diminish the evils of office-seeking. We must stop interference of federal officers with elections. We must be relieved of congressional dictation as to appointments.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)