[greymule]

The ball can most certainly come to rest in, or be picked up in, the batter's box and still be fair. I've seen it happen many times. "In the box" fouls involve, for example, a ball hit down onto a batter's foot that happens to be in the fair part of the box, or a ball that bounces up and hits the batter in the box. Those are simply called foul automatically, without attention to whether the ball was technically fair or foul.

But the ump is incorrect to assume that a batted ball in the box is automatically foul.

In one of my books from about 25 years ago, a Major League ump pointed out that it was quite possible for a batter to hit a ball down onto his foot in the box in fair territory. He said that while, technically, the batter would be out, everybody simply accepts that it's a foul, so that's what they call. Maybe MLB has ruled explicity on it since then.