Quote:
Originally Posted by teebob21
I agree with your logic above, if it had been clearly fair. The batter is out when the fair ball reaches its apex, which it did before the INT, making it an easy INT by retired batter.
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I have a number of problems with this.
First, you've created a strange category of balls that are clearly fair as opposed to possibly fair. I can't imagine that anyone writing the rulebook imagined they were creating a situation where an IF if fair had different interference penalties than a regularly IF. Can one retroactively determine that the if fair part applied?
But principally, the problem with this is that you can't know if a ball will end up fair or foul by where it is in the air (unless we have interference while it's in the air). So you might call IF on a ball hit right above the pitching circle which hits the corner of the rubber and kicks out into foul ground. The batter was never out in that scenario.
Now consider the case of a ball that is also not played near the line and starts bounding in and out of fair territory. Since in your definition it wasn't clearly foul, the batter wasn't out at the apex, but when are they out. Suppose it lands foul, bounces fair and is in the air in foul territory when the BR runs into the 1st basemen. What do you have and how can you possibly square that with what you said above.
Second, calling an infield fly at the apex is a mechanical point. The rule contemplates the hit, the declaration and the ball gaining status so I think you'd have to go with one of those as the moment the batter is out.
Third, if this were the right interpretation then what of the rule which very clearly states that a BR who interferes with the ball is out and the ball is dead with no one else out.