how high does a ball need to be for a infield fly?

[SanDiegoSteve]

Originally Posted by celebur

2) In my experience, most players that say "drops ball on purpose" mean that the fielder deliberately allowed the ball to fall untouched. I suspect that's what happened here, and if so there would be NO reason to call a deliberately dropped ball as advocated by some other posters. If it's not an IF, then allowing the ball to fall is simply smart, heads-up fielding (assuming the fielder is competent enough to execute the play--I've seen many fielders eat crow on this play).

How do you get "drops ball on purpose" to equal "allowed the ball to fall untouched?" That seems like quite a leap of logic to me. It really sounds like the fielder dropped the ball on purpose, meaning he gloved it, then dropped it. If he had meant otherwise, he would have said so.

Sure, allowing the ball to fall untouched would have been a smart play, but what are the odds that the average fielder has time to be so devious? I must reinterate that the poster meant exactly what he said.