Infield fly question

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This one is for Bretman.

College game. Bases loaded, 1 out. Batter hits a popup, home plate ump immediately calls infield fly. Turns out that was way premature as the ball lands 20 feet into CF grass uncaught. None of the infielders got within 10 feet of the ball and the CF came charging in hard and was barely able to tip the ball, but it went uncaught. All runners moved up, and the ball came to the circle. In reality, it wasn't an infield fly at all since nobody was going to catch it with extraordinary effort, much less camp out under it with oridinary effort.

Question is, once all is said and done with the play, should the home plate ump reverse his call and leave the batter/runner on first or stick to his guns and declare the batter out?

 

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I'm not Bretman, but let me try...

1.) An ump reverse his call? Rare.

2.) Infield Fly is called when the Ump thinks it's a "routine" fly ball - right after it leaves the bat. It's too easy to say that it wasn't routine after the ball has landed. Ump saw the ball go straight up and calls IF Rule. End of story. Batter is out, runners advance (At their own peril).

 

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I agree with Louuuuu. The infield fly should be called when the ball is near the top and not when it leaves the bat. The runners can run regardless if it was an infield fly or not so no, they should not be sent back.

 

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First thing I'll say is that I'm not 100% certain of how the NCAA instructs their umpires to handle this. But for high school, ASA, etc...Umpires are permitted to reverse a call. If, after the play, he's truly convinced that he made the wrong call, he should change it.

This can get tricky depending on how the play went. It's possible that a botched infield fly call can put either the offense or the defense in a bad position. It can cause runners to not know if they are forced to run and cause fielders to not know which runner to play upon. That can make it tough to decide where to place runners or what outs to uphold if the call is reversed.

But this one sounds pretty easy. If both runners advanced without a play, and the batter-runner reached first without a play, there really isn't too much else to consider. The reversed call didn't confuse the defense or deprive them from making a play for an out, so leaving the runners right where they are would be a fair solution.

This is exactly why we are taught to not call the infield fly until the ball has reached its apex, is on the way down and we're sure that an "ordinary effort" catch is available on the infield. It's a simple mechanic that can save you a LOT of trouble!

On this one, the offensive coach is likely to be mad that you called the infield fly in the first place- and rightly so. When, you reverse it, the defensive coach is going to be mad- but not so rightly so. They would be benefiting from a bad call and the initial call (at least in this case) didn't prevent his team from making a legitimate play. But you can still probably expect an earfull!

 

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Thanks bretman, that was pretty much how I saw it, but wasn't too sure how wise it would be to reverese the decision. Clearly in this case, it would have been easy. (Aside from the coach's grief, which he got anyway) Just take away the IF call and let things stand as they played out. It's often not so cut and dried.

I won't even start with the call at the plate on the winning run...... Even so, when you lose 9-8 with 6 unearned runs, hard to get too worked up over "the ump cost us the game". But he sure wasn't helping!