Bizarre Infield Fly

[default]

Was at a JV game on Monday, and the following situation happened.
Bases Loaded, 1 out. Pop fly into right field. Umpire calls "infield fly rule-if fair"
Ball is clearly not infield, so the umpire says "no it's not" before the ball lands in front of the right fielder.
Girl on first heads to second, but the second base runner stays put because of the confusion.
The girl caught between first and second is tagged out. Umpire declares inning over.
It was cold and windy, and the score wasn't close, so the ruling wasn't questioned.
What should the correct ruling be?

 

[default]

I'll let Bretman handle the "ruling" question.

However, we need to remind the players of the full scope of the infield fly rule. We often see runners just stand on the base when infield fly is called. It's "Infield Fly - batter is out" but the full verbiage states that runners may proceed "at their own peril". Therefore, if the fielder drops the ball, the runners may take off for the next base. The Force Play is off because the batter is out, but you are allowed to go. Consequently, if the fielder catches the ball under Infield Fly, runners - if daring enough - can tag up and go. The Infield Fly rule was designed to eliminate the "accidental" Oops, I dropped the Pop Up, which then becomes a double play. It doesn't mean that everybody automatically stays put.

This doesn't help in your situation where you heard - She's out. No she's not...

 

[default]

Sounds like the umpire called the Infield Fly too soon. You should really wait until the ball has reached it's peak and is starting back down, so that you can be sure of where it might land and if an infielder will have a routine play on it, before you even think about announcing the Infield Fly.

But apparently this guy didn't. So what do you do now?

Rule 10 (which covers the umpires) says that the plate umpire may rectify any situation where runners or fielders are put into jeopardy by a reversed or delayed call. The "fix" can be any combination of enforcing outs made on the play, or eliminating outs, or placing runners on an advanced base, or even returning them to the bases they started on.

In short, there's no "set in stone, one size fits all" solution here. The umpire needs to judge what the most likely outcome of the play would have been had he not reversed the call and confused the players, then place runners or enforce outs accordingly.

Doing that really requires seeing all of the play and how the players reacted to the first (wrong) call. You say this ball went into the outfield and dropped in front of the right fielder. Was it a ball where the runners would have been off and running had the Infield Fly not been called? Was it a ball where you would have expected the runners to have been staying put anyway, because there was a chance of it being caught? Was the ball hit deep enough that the runners probably would have moved up, or was it so shallow that they couldn't have advanced? If the runners would have normally been tagging, do you think that the right fielder would have had a shot at getting a force out, say at second base? How did the other runners react to this call- did they all stay put or take off? How about the defense- did they "stop playing" when the Infield Fly call was made, which could have also put them at a disadvantage?

Okay...you're the umpire. Take all of that into consideration, then place the runners or enforce any outs necessary to duplicate whatever you judge would have most likely happened if the right call had been made in the first place. Good luck, because no matter what you choose, you can almost guarantee that one side or the other is not going to like it! You're probably going to get an earful and, to some extent, you're just going to have to take it because this whole mess is your own fault!

Believe me, it's so much easier to just call this the right way in the first place. All this umpire had to do was say nothing until he was totally sure where the ball would be coming down. Do that one simple thing and this whole mess is avoided. I hope he learned a lesson!

 

[default]

Regardless it seems that the 3b coach should have been waving that kid over to third.....unless they were the team that was way up and he wanted to end the misery.

 

[default]

Thank you Bretman

 

[default]

Thank you Bretman

The ball does not have to be in the infield area for infield fly to have been called an infield fly--batter out. Without seeing the play, the 2d baseman could have been playing deep and only have to go back a couple of feet and the right fielder could have been playing in--in other words, the 2d baseman may have had a reasonable, ordinary catch, which is basically the criteria to be used for an infield fly. You could have allittle infield fly in the infield that might not be routinely caught so in that case, there is no infield fly. And, on top of all that, the home plate umpire has to make those judgements fairly quickly--so the possibility of a judgement error is more prevalent.

 

[default]

All of those what-ifs and maybes went through my head when answering this question. Maybe this really could have been an infield fly if it wasn't hit too deep and an infielder was playing back. Maybe the righfielder was playing in close enough that she was almost on the infield.

But the bottom line is that this call was reversed- mid-play! No matter what the initial call should have been, it was definitely a reversed call. So you really have to treat it as such and that's where the guidelines of Rule 10 come into play.

 

[default]

So are we saying that R1 would stay at 2nd base, R2 is out, and batter is on 1st base with 2 outs now in the inning?

That's probably how I would try to unscramble this mess.