Interference on an infield fly
 

Not something you see every day.

Bases loaded, 1 out. Pop between the mound and F6. Obvious infield fly. F6 crashes into R2 who's dancing off second. Since the popup never passed the BU, he didn't see the collision -- I called it from the plate. F6 recovered well and caught the (already dead) ball.

Inning over. A minute or so later after being called ridiculous, I had my first ejection of the season.

Nice Job
 

Got a twofer:

Got a good call, and got a coach.

Well done!

Strange play, and believe it or not had the almost exact play last week; however, F6 dropped the ball. Of course it resulted in mad confusion.
We did not have ejections to follow though, coaches were confused too so they pretty much went along.

Thanks
David

Re: Ejection

Too easy, Rich! ;)

How did BU not see this?

Ah, but this situation begs an interesting question. If the ball/play is dead at the point of INT, and the ball is nowhere near the apex of it's travel (just going up), can you still call the IFF? Can you call IFF on a dead ball?

IFF is in effect when the ball is hit, not when it hits its apex. The umpires wait until the apex to call it to ensure all the conditions are met (especially ordinary effort).

7.4.1G, while a different situation, says "The situation [of Infield Fly] determines the out, not the declaration." The situation was there: bases loaded, less than two outs, pop fly, ordinary effort (as evidenced by F6 still catching the ball).

So, to answer your questions, yes. You can still call the IFF.

Nope. Doesn't.
Beg The Question // Get it right.

Too much time on your hands. :D

Peace

Yikes! The OOO of the grammar department! ;)

Interesting diet being advertised on the side of this link....HMMM.....

Confused - iff - interference?
 

Explain why the second out on the IFF please? 1. IFF 2. Interference on R2? - The way I understand it, the interference did not disrupt the play, F6 caught the ball, would this not be a delayed dead ball situation...now if the interference caused him to drop it - would it then be interference as stated in a related post?

The play began with 1 out. Second out on IFF. Third out on INT.

Fielders have a right to an unimpeded attempt to field a batted ball. The runner bumped into him. Minimal judgment required to call that (some would say "automatic").

INT by a runner is an immediate dead ball in all cases. Only coach's, catcher's, and batter's INT are delayed dead.

Today an umpire acquaintance said of this play, "I'd call the interference and ignore the Infield Fly - there's no way you can get two outs on this."
I discovered there was no way I could convince him otherwise.

JJ

What's his opinion on an IFF that hits a runner off a base?

That's different. That's merely interference by a runner during an.....wait a minute! It's exactly the same! :D

It took me about 10 seconds to realize that the inning was over. I called the interference and realized a second later we were dealing with an infield fly. The question I'd like to ask the acquaintance is why he would ignore the infield fly -- that batter is out, by rule, when that fair fly ball is hit.

No provision of the rules permits ignoring an IFF. If you were going to ignore something here, it would be the INT, on the grounds that the defense wasn't really "hindered."

I don't accept that argument, but there's more room for reasonable people to disagree.

I don't even buy that one as being reasonable. The fielder almost went a$$ over teakettle due to the interference and made a last second lunging catch of the ball. It was just as likely he'd miss the catch and kick the ball away.

I'm certainly not waiting and then applying interference retroactively. Interference is an immediate dead ball. A collision with a protected fielder is almost certainly interference.

Besides, that wouldn't have changed anything. The offensive coach argued that because the fielder came from behind, "what's my guy supposed to do? That's not interference! He's in the baseline where he's supposed to be!" Sigh.