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I guess my point is is that if I were to have called the infield fly, then the defense would be awarded an out even though they didn't derserve it. It seems to me that the purpose of the infield fly is to prevent the defense from getting an easy out on either r1 or r2 on the force. Greg
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Greg:
According to black letter law, you answered your own question.
The purpose of the infield fly rule is to prevent the defense from obtaining an unmerited double play. When the ball was hit, you said it was a routine play. Since no envionmental conditions affected play, you must go with the definition in your rule book. In
baseball it says: The batter is out if the fly ball can be caught with "ordinary effort."
It is not up to you (or any other umpire) to impose your ideas of
how fielders should play onto the basic rules. Once you start evaluating the fielder's actions on that play (rather than all plays), you leave open the possibility some coach will teach a behavior that will induce runners to attempt to advance. The unmerited double play beckons.
With R1 and R2, or R1, R2, and R3 and fewer than two outs: Any fly ball that rises to an appreciable height and that will come down within the infield should be called an infield fly in any game where the players shave (either their faces or their legs).
[Edited by Carl Childress on Oct 16th, 2001 at 03:09 PM]