Had an issue come up in a game recently and wanted to get everyone's take on it.....

1st inning - pop up to 2nd base, opposing team's dugout is screaming "I got it, I got it!" My 2nd baseman catches it. I say nothing.

3rd inning - pop up to 1st base, same thing. I'm silent.

6th inning - REALLY high pop up to my pitcher. I've coached my infielders to take these instead of the pitcher, but had a slower kid at 3rd who couldn't get to it. The other dugout screams "I got it!" and my pitcher backs off. The ball hits the dirt and bounces foul. Pitcher's dad is behind home plate (of course) and says "come on man, you gotta catch those!" and the Pitcher makes an excuse "I couldn't see it!" I call time and go talk to the umpire....

I make my case that as soon as they said "I got it!" my pitcher backed off, which was true. The umpire says "I understand, but in my opinion they didn't interfere with the play, he said he missed it because he lost it in the sun." I don't THINK he actually said that, maybe he did, but the sun was behind him so either way that definitely didn't actually happen.

So first of all, my pitcher needs to catch this ball. It was annoying, but I'm not 100% convinced that the dugout really interfered here. My question here is....does that matter? Is this an immediate dead ball infraction, or does it have to be clear that they interfered?