[teebob21]

I'm not picking apart your response, just engaging in constructive discussion here.

Originally Posted by youngump

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).

We had INT while the ball was in air, and its fair/foul status was never determined. Had the ball been "clearly fair", i.e. not in question, we would have been able to rule on the infield fly out. Also, note that in the comment I am indulging Dakota's request to take "I dunno" out of it, and assume a fair ball.

Originally Posted by youngump

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.

I get that. I've also never seen it happen that way. Doesn't mean it can't, though. Seems like a poor mechanic then, calling it before we know with certainty whether or not it will be fair. Maybe we should shout "if fair" on every IFF? (<--- this is sarcasm)

Originally Posted by youngump

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.

This would be a foul ball, unless somehow a fielder had an opportunity to make an out on a batted ball that had already hit the ground, and was over foul territory.

Originally Posted by youngump

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.

Your second point also captures the crux of my OP: when is a BR retired on a infield fly? My partner never called infield fly, and the fair/foul status was "I dunno". Was the BR a retired runner at the time of INT or not?

We deemed that she was not, thus the defense was not awarded a second out for INT by a retired runner.