Fielders make no attempt to catch ball on infield fly situation

As I read the rule, an Infield Fly is a ball that “can be caught by an infielder with ordinary effort.” There is no requirement that any fielder actually make such an effort and it is the nature of the ball that determines whether it can be caught with ordinary effort, not the fielder. I would have called it.

As your post questions the application versus the spirit of the rule, you are correct.  As an umpire, it is your judgement whether the ball could be “caught with reasonable effort”.  Thus, you can cite conditions which may make it unreasonable to catch which often includes wind, sun position, etc. …and at lower levels, the age of the players.  We pregame these items on certain fields all the time to be patient on calling infield fly.  The players have a responsibility to continue to play, and the batter is typically safe at first if he runs after the ball is hit high enough to be an infield fly…especially if the fielders didn’t move into position to catch it in the air, it would take some time for them to pick it up off the ground from their standing positions.

tzemaitis: You wrote, “The players have a responsibility to continue to play, and the batter is typically safe at first…”.  Isn’t the batter out on an infield fly?  I guess a better question on my part would be, is an obvious infield fly an infield fly even if not called so by the umpiring crew as was stated in the original post by jrock1214?

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