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Take me out to the ball game

Some of you may know that I am a little nuts when it comes to baseball. I think it is altogether fitting and proper that Opening Night came one week after Easter. They are both religious holidays in my life. The Nationals unveiled a new ball park on Sunday. And it was a gem of a ballgame. Third baseman Ryan Zimmerman hit a walk-off homer in the bottom of the 9th with two outs. It was almost a surreal experience. You can kind of see me in this picture. I am one of the tiny dots in right center field just below the scoreboard.

I was motivated to write about baseball because of an excellent post written by the good folks over at Above the Law. I'm not sure why lawyers and academics tend to be baseball fans, but there is a rich history and tradition of baseball being the subject of law review articles. For those of you who have access to Westlaw or JSTOR, I encourage you to check out 123 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1474, which is entitled The Common Law Origins of the Infield Fly Rule. According to Above the Law, this article "has developed a cult following."

For you non-baseball fans out there, the infield fly is designed to counteract a major advantage that infielders have on defense. The rule applies when there are runners on first and second or the bases are loaded and there are less than two outs. In that situation, if there is a fly ball that is hit that an infielder can catch with "ordinary effort" the batter is automatically declared to be out and the runners can stay on their bases.

Why is this important? Because without this rule, the infielder could intentionally drop the fly ball and turn a double play because the runners would be close to their bases (for fear of being caught off base if the fly ball were caught).

Since baseball was invented, baseball rules have been stretched as far as possible to help a team win. For instance, players used to be able to substitute in and out of the game by notifying the umpire of their intention. Above the Law cites a story in the UPenn article of a player who "inserted himself into the game when a ball was already in the air to catch a pop fly that was out of the reach of any of his teammates."

The UPenn article also uses a footnote to define the word "the" when he uses the word for the first time. When he used "the" the second time, he inserted another footnote which read, "Note 1, supra." It would have been perfect for the Green Bag, but alas it was written before that fine journal was invented.

For those of you who do not have access to Westlaw or JSTOR, you can go here to read an even more humorous article about the contributions the infield fly rule has made to Western civilization from a 2006 edition of the Northwestern Law Review. Here is a brief excerpt from the section on the infield fly during the Enlightenment:

Lefty Leibniz, hotshot reliever for the Hanover Huns, famously proclaimed after chug-a-lugging seven straight steins of Erfahrung Extragewichtig Pilsner that this was the best of all possible worlds. Some time later he was brought in from the bullpen to face the Paris Polysémiques. It was the bottom of the ninth, the score was tied, there was one out, and the Sémics had the bases loaded with Denny ?the Dip? Diderot hugging third, ?Jay-Jay? Rousseau cheating off second, and ?the Baron? Montesquieu taking a wide lead off first. Tensions reached the boiling point. The batter, Voltaire, muttered curses at Leibniz in pidgin French. Leibniz shrugged them off, pumped, shook, and heaved. Voltaire swung for the seats but only managed to pop the ball up high over the mound. The umpire was yelling something as Leibniz allowed the ball to bounce, then deftly flipped it to the third baseman who threw to second, apparently executing a double play. The umpire yelled ?Infield fly?one out only.? ?What do you mean?? Leibniz yelled back. ?Can?t you count up to two?? Meanwhile Diderot took advantage of the distraction to run home, scoring the winning run.

I hope you enjoy the coming baseball season as much as I will. Unless you're a Yankees fan, in which case I wish you nothing but pain. Sorry, but as the son of a Bostonian, I am contractually obligated to write that.

Full post as published by Supreme Dicta on April 01, 2008 (boomark / email).