And now for something completely different!

[Lebowski]

The "Infield fly rule"! Yay.

I would imagine there are a few fellow Celtic fans who are also baseball fans in here to help me out.

This rule kinda makes sense, but there are still a few details missing for me. As I understand it, with the help of Google, a batter is out if the umpire calls "pop fly" or whatever. So then the defense does not have to catch the ball? The batter is out regardless? I guess it is in good spirit to catch the fly ball anyway but they could not, and no error will be charged?

Cheers!

[JohnnySic]

Late response, but anyway...

The purpose of the rule is to prevent teams from creating "artificial" double plays. Say there's a runner on first, and the batter hits an infield pop up, and the defense lets it drop. Without the rule, the runner on first must advance to second, and potentially the defense can get both the runner (force at second) and the hitter (out at first) out by letting the ball drop in play on purpose and then fielding it. The infield fly rule prevents these types of shenanigans.