The NFHS book creates a penalty for stepping out of the box. The penalty is that you call a pitched ball a strike regardless of location. One foot out of the box, one strike. Two feet out of the box, two strikes. The ball is allowed to be pitched and is live while in flight. Anytime a pitched ball hits a batter, it becomes an immediate dead ball. Thus, you kill the play because of the HBP, but you don’t award the HBP penalty nor call the pitch based on it’s merits regarding it’s location to the strike zone. It becomes a strike or two, and the batter remains if permitted by the advancement of the count.
