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In Defense of Baseball’s Infield Fly Rule

By Howard Wasserman

Baseball’s Infield Fly Rule has sparked more legal fascination than any other rule in sports. It returned to the national spotlight this past week when an unusual and controversial infield fly call in last Friday’s National League Wild Card game between the St. Louis Cardinals and Atlanta Braves short-circuited a potential Braves rally in a game the Braves ultimately lost. Opinion has been divided on the correctness of the call.

But beyond criticism of this specific call, some fans on Twitter and in web forums expressed a deeper distaste for the Infield Fly Rule itself, questioning whether it is necessary, wise, or warranted. They’re misguided: The rule is part of the sport’s fabric, uniquely warranted for a situation that’s unique to baseball.

There’s no other situation in baseball when the fielding team will be better off by not catching a fair ball than by catching it.

Here’s how the Infield Fly Rule works. When a team has runners on first and second or the bases loaded with less than two out and the batter hits a pop-fly ball (but not a line drive) in fair territory that can be easily caught by an infielder (under the rule, can be caught with “ordinary effort”), the batter is called out, regardless of whether the fielder catches the ball; if the ball drops and remains fair, it is in play and the runners can try to advance at their own risk. The rule is designed to remove the incentive for a fielder to deliberately drop an easily handled ball on the infield, which likely would allow him to turn a double play on the two base runners (and perhaps, although less likely, a triple play). It took its more-or-less current form in 1901, enacted in response to infielders actually doing this, a bit of trickery that was deemed not “sporting” at the time.

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In the July 23rd edition of The Atlantic, FIU Law Professor Howard Wasserman and co-author Dan Markel discuss creating “Fan Action Committees” to enable fans to pool and pay money to lure free-agent athletes to their teams.

Howard Wasserman is a professor of law at Florida International University and the editor of the Sports Law Blog.

What If Fans Could Have Paid Jeremy Lin to Stay in New York?

BY DAN MARKEL & HOWARD WASSERMAN

Introducing a new plan to lure sports superstars: Fan Action Committees

New York Knicks fans were deeply disappointed by the loss last week of guard and basketball folk hero Jeremy Lin to the Houston Rockets. Knicks fans are not alone in their sadness. Cleveland fans still have not recovered from LeBron James’ decision to take his talents to South Beach, when he signed with the Miami Heat two years ago.

It’s too late now for Lin and LeBron, but high-profile departures like these are a recurring matter in professional sports. And fans should be able to have more influence on these matters. Here’s how.

Imagine if Knicks fans could monetize their support for re-signing Lin, either as a financial kicker or simply as an expression of their desire to have him stay with the Knicks. Like politics, where we see political action committees (PACs) raise and spend money for candidates, we think there should be “Fan Action Committees” (FACs) performing similar functions. Using Facebook, Paypal, and other crowd-sourcing technologies, fans in the future could form something like a “Don’t Stop the Linsanity” Committee. From the other side, Houston fans might to do the same to make their city even more attractive to Lin.

Such FACs would organize and collect money (pledged conditionally via credit card) from other fans to provide a one-time (or perhaps even a recurring) payment for a player who joins or stays with the team. The organizers of the FAC could track the number of fans participating, as well as the money raised, as a demonstration of fan love for the player. In essence, FAC members operate like college boosters, showing their support for their teams through money. The difference is that the money goes not to the team, but to the players.

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