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From: pete@umcp-cs.UUCP (Pete Cottrell)
Newsgroups: net.sport.baseball
Subject: Re: An infield-fly-rule question
Message-ID: <1953@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 23-Oct-85 13:53:04 EDT
Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.1953
Posted: Wed Oct 23 13:53:04 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 25-Oct-85 07:32:39 EDT
References: <475@ttidcb.UUCP> <1808@hao.UUCP>
Reply-To: pete@maryland.UUCP (Pete Cottrell)
Organization: U of Maryland, Computer Science Dept., College Park, MD
Lines: 35

In article <1808@hao.UUCP> woods@hao.UUCP (Greg Woods) writes:
>> 
>>     An interesting situation occurred in the NLCS game of  Thursday  10/10
>>     when Ozzie Smith was on first base  with  one  out.  Andujar  was  the
>>     batter  and  was trying to sacrifice Smith over to second base when he
>>     bunted a pop-up to the Dodger pitcher, Hersheiser,  who  intentionally
>>     allowed  the  bunt  to  drop  (he could have caught the ball) and then
>>     threw the ball to second to start a successful  inning  ending  double
>>     play.  
>>     ...it  appears that the baseball rules committee
>>     should expand the scope of the  infield  fly  rule  to  cover  special
>>     situations  with  only  a  baserunner at first and less than two outs.
>
>  I disagree. It requires a very smart play to allow a bunt or line drive
>to fall. A pop fly, however, you have time to THINK about it. With the bunt
>or line drive examples, you have to really be on your toes to get that
>double play. And, you have to have good execution of the infield play in order
>to get the batter out at first.
>

Hmmmm. During last night's game (a KC win, 6-1, 3rd game) they had another
'You make the Call' segment. In it, with a runner on first, Eddie Murray
intentionally let a ball drop out of his glove on an infield popout in
order to try and get a double play. The ruling was that a fielder may not
intentionally drop a ball in an attempt to do this, so the runner stayed
at first and the batter was ruled out. The only difference I see between
the 2 situations is that Murray actually touched the ball and let it 
bounce out. I assume this makes all the difference in the world; the only
other conclusion is that the umpires are inconsistent, which is of course
far too outlandish a possibilty ;-)
-- 
Call-Me:   Pete Cottrell, Univ. of Md. Comp. Sci. Dept.
UUCP:	   {seismo,allegra,brl-bmd}!umcp-cs!pete
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