[DownTownTonyBrown]

Thanks, I recognise the larger portion of your quotes.

The discussion comes in the area of "What is ORDINARY effort?" If the catch was made I'm going to rule that the effort was ordinary (unless the fielder was running full speed and had to dive to make the catch, etc.) And as the rule is intended to protect the runners, I'm going to error on the side of protecting those runners by calling their teammate OUT on the INFIELD FLY. If the situation is present and the batter makes a poor hit, call the out.

As a sidelight, I have a rule-of-thumb that I regularly employ: NEVER MISS AN OPPORTUNITY TO CALL AN OUT. An infield fly situation is a great opportunity to make an out call.

I fully recognise that there are infield fly hits that cannot be caught. (There are some very well known umpires that will argue this point.) I would not call these hits good on the part of the batter and I would not call them an infield fly either. Play on. This type of hit is relatively uncommon.

If I have time to take off my mask, look up and find the ball, recognise that a fielder is moving into position for the catch, and I can do all of that before the ball reaches its apex (or very near to that time), I'm thinking that this is going to be caught with ordinary effort and I will sing the infield fly song.

If the ball is already well on its way down, or no one is going to be in position, or all the runners are off because they think no one is going to catch it, I'm not going to call it.

How do you get through to your partner? He's got to be willing to learn. Then discuss it. In my opinion, rare is the pop-up to the infield that cannot be caught with ordinary effort. The infield fly should be called much more often than not.