page_title: The Common Law Origins of the Infield Fly Rule
section_title: Argument
hierarchical_section_title: The Common Law Origins of the Infield Fly Rule / The article / Argument
caption_attribution_description: English: A photo purported to be The New York Knickerbockers Base Ball Club, circa 1847: Top, left to right: Alfred Cartwright, Alexander Cartwright and, William Wheaton. Bottom, left to right: Duncan Curry, Daniel "Doc" Adams, Henry Tiebout Anthony.
context_page_description: "The Common Law Origins of the Infield Fly Rule" is the title of an article by William S. Stevens published in 1975 in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review. The brief eight-page article has vastly surpassed its modest original context, having been cited in federal and state judicial opinions and more than 100 works of legal literature. It has been included in a number of anthologies of baseball law, and prompted copycat and parody articles. The New York Times called the article "one of the most celebrated and imitated analyses in American legal history."
context_section_description: Stevens ambitiously tried to mix understated humor with serious legal comment. He explained that the article's purpose was "to examine whether the same types of forces that shaped the development of the common law also generated the Infield Fly Rule." Noting that England was the birthplace both of common law and of proto-baseball, Stevens discussed the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club, the first team using codified baseball rules, in 1845.  For the club's members, the "rules which governed their contests clearly indicate that the game was to be played by gentlemen.  Winning was not the objective; exercise was." As winning, however, came to be valued over exercise when the game spread beyond its gentlemanly origins, "written rules had to be made more and more specific, in order to preserve the spirit of the game.":1476
  Pointing out examples of dubious play from professional baseball in the 1890s that led to the infield fly rule, the article turned to its legal analogy.  Stevens argued that the infield fly rule "emerged from the interplay of four factors, each of which closely resembles a major force in the development of the common law.":1478
caption: The New York Knickerbockers Baseball Club, ca. 1847
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