Hands part of the bat...

[glock22]

Hands are part of the bat..MYTH. It's really pretty straigt forward, if a pitched 'ball' hits the batter on the hand in the umpires judgement, dead ball batter to first. If batter is swinging at a pitch and the ball hits his hand and the ball goes in to fair territory, ball is live and in play. If it goes in foul territory, strike. As another poster suggested, it's sometimes hard to distinguish if the ball hit the bat or the hand and it comes down to umpire judgement, however, if the batter is swinging at the pitch it will be strike or live ball. I had a partner once who called a stike on a batter when the ball obviously hit the batters hand and the offended team's coach went crazy saying he should be on first, partner said in his judgement, the batter moved his hands in the strike zone. Good call.

Good lord, this is why people don't understand the rules!

[ut18vols]

Yes sir, officially you are correct and I stand corrected, but I have never seen an umpire call anyone out on a swing where the ball hit the batters hand and basically ended up looking like a bunt. That would be a very tough judgement call as to whether it hit the handle or the meat, lol.

 

Basically if the kid falls over holding hands or just runs it out like nothing happened will be the deciding factor.