Three scenarios from this season

[teebob21]

Originally Posted by Dakota

I agree that seems to be the question.

Let's take the "I dunno" out of it and say it was a fair ball.

BR out by rule, so she is retired at the time of the interference (even if the IF is called late).

If the umpire judges that the fielder had a chance for a live ball appeal on one of the other runners, is the runner closest to home out?

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.

To me (as OP) the "I dunno" was the key part of the fustercluck. My partner's brain fell out, and when we conferenced, he DID NOT KNOW if the ball was fair or foul. It was like we had Schrödinger's Infield Fly. Before the INT, the runner was either out or still safe, but no one was certain of the state of the ball, and thus the state of the runner.

I did not judge that there was another play to be made on a runner, everyone was tagged up on the popup. Thank goodness: that would have made it even worse.

[youngump]

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.

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.