Infield Fly

[Dakota]

At this weekend's 12U ASA JO tournament, my partner called two IF's that I would not have called. I was the BU; he had the plate. The two fly balls were not quite line drives, but were a low enough arch that I considered the fielder's ability to catch them to be more the luck of quick reflexes, particularly at 12U, and not "ordinary effort."

The book says that a line drive is not an IF. I don't judge the IF based on arch (like a SP pitch), but there are fly balls into the infield that are higher than a line drive but are still not an IF.

So, I've been thinking... how do you make the decision?

[IRISHMAFIA]

Well, I make the decision by determining whether the infielder can make the catch with normal effort. I have had pop-ups land between F1,F2 & F3 that none had a chance at catching with ordinary effort, so I did not rule IF. Of course, everyone else sees the pop-up land in the infield and insists that I have no idea what I'm doing out there. But I don't care, because I'm the umpire and getting big bucks to do this d;-)

As far as height, ASA's definition of a line drive requires the ball be hit "sharply and directly into the playing field." So if there was a hump in the batted ball and it was right to a player or the player seemed to have an easy play on it, I would probably rule IF.

[Gre144]

Please look at my post that I posted on the forum for baseball. It is about an infield fly situation that I had in a softball game. I probably should have posted it here. Anyways, please take a look at it.