[John Robertson]

In my previous post about the batted ball htting second base and then rolling backwards, tcblue made an interesting comment. He said that since the ball hit second base, it was certainly beyond first and third base, thus it must be a fair ball.

In judging whether a batted ball has landed "past" first or third base, I have always envisioned the diamond as a box with straight lines running between first and second base and second and third base. A fly ball that lands in fair territory beyond the boundaries of this imagnary box, I will call fair, even if backspin brings it back within this box and eventually past a foul line.

It sounds like tcblue envisions an imaginary line running between first and third--and therefore a somewhat shorter distance for a batted ball to first hit the ground and be called fair.

Have I been misinterpreting this for years? Please enlighten me.