Infield Fly Question

Welcome to Discuss Fastpitch

Your FREE Account is waiting to the Best Softball Community on the Web.

Aug 10, 2016
686
63
Georgia
At DD's game this week, they had some drama related to a IF ruling.

DD's team is up 9-4 against a team that we are expecting to beat.
Top of the 4th, bases are loaded with 1 out.
Batter hits a pop fly towards 1st base. 1st basemen tries to catch it but drops it. Ump calls IF so batter is out. Because the girl dropped it, our girls take off running. Girl on 3rd gets home. Girl on 2nd goes to 3rd (eventually scores) and girl on 1st starts running to 2nd. 1st basemen throws to SS at 2nd and the girl just steps on the base. It's not a force play so our girl gets to 2nd and she should be safe since she never got tagged.
Tons of confusion happened because I'm guessing everyone thought they needed to tag up or it was a force. The team assumes they've gotten a double play and run off and our girl goes back to the dugout.
Umps and coaches talk for a while...
Finally they bring the girl back out to stand on second and their defense comes back out.
The runs count and we proceeded to get another 3 runs on the 2 outs.
For the next inning or so, one of the parents from the other team is complaining to the tournament director behind us. I get complaining about something like that if the score is close and those runs could decide the game but when we ended up winning 17-5, it's not really worth it.

DH says that we should have left our girl on 2nd and not walked off in order for it to even matter and that since both teams walked off, it should have been over.

Thoughts? I was having a lot of trouble scoring it with GC as well..
Honestly it made what was a very boring game a little more exciting (their pitchers walked our girls 14 times)
 
Jun 22, 2008
3,731
113
Did the umpire call the girl going to 2nd safe or out? If he called her safe and she left the base and went in the dugout on her own then she is out once she entered dead ball territory. If the umpire called her out and she left the field because of the call, then they should bring her back out and put her back on base.
 
Aug 10, 2016
686
63
Georgia
It appeared that he called her out and that's when the umps and coaches all started talking. No one saw the girl tag her so we were all confused why the ump would have called her out.
 
Jun 11, 2013
2,619
113
Without being there it seems the umps got it right. I honestly don't know why the IFF rule causes so much confusion. I had parents on
my team for years and still didn't know the rule.
 
Aug 10, 2016
686
63
Georgia
Without being there it seems the umps got it right. I honestly don't know why the IFF rule causes so much confusion. I had parents on
my team for years and still didn't know the rule.

The one thing I had to confirm was whether they had to tag up - since she didn't catch it, I know that they don't. I'm guessing most of the time, they do catch it so it acts like a normal pop-out. The dropping is where the confusion came about I'm guessing.
 
Mar 15, 2014
191
18
Dropping the infield fly means that any runner who advances has to be tagged.
As far as tagging up if caught it is the same as any fly ball.
They must return to the base if caught before any legal advance can happen.
If not caught, as with any other fly ball, there is no need to return to the base before advancing.
 
Last edited:

MTR

Jun 22, 2008
3,438
48
I honestly don't know why the IFF rule causes so much confusion. I had parents on
my team for years and still didn't know the rule.

I agree. It is one of, if not THE simplest rule in the book. The ONLY thing that happens on an IF is the batter-runner is declared out. All, but one other rule in the book are still in effect when an IF is declared.
 

Latest posts

Members online

Forum statistics

Threads
42,830
Messages
679,468
Members
21,443
Latest member
sstop28
Top