Deregulate the Infield
The Infield Fly Rule is Neoliberalism at its Worst
A kind of funny thing happened Sunday in a game at Wrigley Field. With a runner on first and nobody out, Avisail Garcia popped up softly to second base. It was such a routine pop up that Garcia didn’t run hard to first, assuming it would be caught easily by the Cubs second baseman, Nico Hoerner. But Hoerner realized that Garcia was lollygagging and made a clever decision: he let the ball drop and turned it into a double play.
When the Cubs posted the play on Twitter, a bunch of fans wondered why the umps didn’t invoke the infield fly rule, which speaks to how poorly understood that rule is. The infield fly rule applies only when there are at least two runners on base and fewer than two outs, which happens so rarely that you can watch whole seasons of baseball and never see it called.
Nevertheless, the rule is a big part of baseball’s mythology. It speaks to the game’s weird moralistic streak. Baseball is full of arbitrary rules and traditions built on nothing but an intuitive sense of what feels right: bunts and sacrifice flies don’t count against your batting average; you can’t assume a double play; you don’t get charged with an error if you lose a ball in the sun; etc. None of these standards abide by an internal logic—it just seems UNFAIR to do it any other way.
Most of these are just about scoring, but the infield fly rule actually affects how the game is governed. If a batter pops the ball up under certain conditions, the ump can declare a potential double play unworthy and call the batter out AUTOMATICALLY. It’s completely ridiculous and should be immediately repealed, for at least two reasons.
1) We don’t need to means test double plays.
The logic behind the infield fly rule is that it is supposed to prevent unfair or cheap double plays. But this distinction is completely inconsistent. We don’t demand other double plays prove their worthiness. “Cheap” double plays happen all the time. With a man on, a hitter lines a ball right at the first baseman, who steps on the bag for a double play. A middle infielder is out of position when the ball is hit, either because of a shift or a stolen base attempt, and as a result happens to be up the middle to turn a single into a double play. Are these more “fair” than a double play on a dropped pop up?
More than this, baseball is full of random, unfair events: A hard-hit ball goes right into a fielder’s glove after a blooper falls just over an infielder’s reach. A wild pitch ricochets right back to the catcher in time to throw out a runner. A routine grounder hits a base and caroms into the outfield. Baseball, like life, is not fair. In every other case, we accept it as part of the game—but for infield flies, we try to legislate the supposed unfairness out of the game.
2) We can let the players make plays.
The reason this particular brand of unfairness is singled out, we are told, is that players won’t know what to do without the infield fly rule. In this situation, a runner on base cannot possibly make the right move. If he runs while the ball is in the air, the fielder will catch it and throw him out for being off the base on a pop up. If he stays put, then the fielder will let it drop and get the force out at the next base. This will create chaos and bad plays.
The first problem with this is that the rule that exists now just creates a different kind of chaos. The rule is so rarely invoked, is so fucking confusing, and requires such a subjective judgment from the umpire about what “ordinary effort” means, that there’s basically no way to enforce it consistently. Not even the players seem to understand it. Any time it is invoked seems to lead to great controversy or confusion.
Of course, eliminating the rule would not eliminate the confusion. Players would still have to make snap decisions about what the right strategic move was. But that is part of the game! It’s almost the whole point. Why are the umpires preventing the players from sorting it out themselves? If the runners don’t want to be thrown out, they can try to deke out the fielders. Or one runner can try to advance and another stay put—ensuring one out preventing a double play. Or they can just try and beat the throw. But at least let the players DO SOMETHING. If it leads to a lot of routine double plays, then so what? Most double plays are already pretty routine.
Given the crisis baseball is facing over a lack of balls in play, you’d think they would want to encourage situations where fielders have to make creative plays. Look at this play where the infield fly rule was called, and then at this one where it wasn’t, and tell me which one you think baseball should want more of.
Look, this is obviously a small thing. Changing this rule is not going to dramatically change baseball. But the philosophy behind this rule needs to be eliminated. It’s the philosophy that undergirds so much neoliberal bullshit. It’s understandable to want to be fair. But the way to do that is NOT to create confusingly specific rules that nobody can understand or follow, and which apply to hardly any situations. That’s how you get the infield fly rule and it’s how you end up with a student loan forgiveness program aimed at Pell Grant recipients who start a business in a disadvantaged community and operate it for at least three years.
The better solution is accept that random unfairness is a part of life, and create universal rules and programs to ensure that this unfairness does not fall disproportionately on any one group. To put it simply, just try to lower the stakes of a bad break. In baseball, the stakes are already pretty low. So just let them play…