Why Baseball Has the Infield Fly Rule

Bid McPhee played second base for Cincinnati for eighteen straight seasons. Fred Pfeffer, also a second baseman, came up with the Chicago White Stockings and finished his prime in Louisville. They were two of the best fielders of the 1880s and 1890s, and they had figured out a small piece of larceny the rules hadn't caught up to.

With runners on first and second, fewer than two outs, they would camp under a soft pop-up, let the ball touch the heel of the glove, and drop it. Runners holding near their bags didn't dare commit until they saw the ball hit dirt. By then McPhee or Pfeffer was already stepping on second and firing to first. Two outs, on a play the batter had no business reaching base.

A reporter, quoting fans in the cheap seats, wrote that the pair "had de play down fine as silk and made suckers outen de guys on de bases." That's a real sentence in a real ballpark column. The National League wrote the first version of the infield fly rule in 1894, in the same offseason. The next year they fixed the language — runners had to be on both first and second — and in 1901 they tightened it again to require fewer than two outs.

The rule is the only one in the book that calls a batter out for a play the defense didn't make. Umpires shout it now while the ball is still in the air. McPhee made the Hall of Fame in 2000. The rule outlasted his glove.