 So, sacrifice flies are a fairly common occurrence in a ball game, but there is a play that is a lot less common involving sacrifice flies that they might make a pretty good trivia question for your friends, and that is, how can a sacrifice fly take place, but there are no outs on the play? So, the batter gets credit for a sacrifice fly, but there are no outs, and the reason this is uncommon is because of course when you think of a sacrifice fly, you have your batter up and then with a runner on third base, and so then the batter hits a long fly ball outside of the right fielder, the right fielder catches the ball in as soon as he does that, the runner on third base tags up, runs home, and scores the base, and so that of course would be an out and a sacrifice fly with the run scoring, and that is important to remember for a sacrifice fly too, the run, there must be a run scored on the play, if a runner just goes and tags up from second, it runs to third, that is not a sacrifice fly, that simply pop out and the runner is tagging up, so how can we have a sacrifice fly without that out fielder catching the ball, and that is through the second part of the rule about sacrifice flies, and so our standard definition of a sacrifice fly has to be less than two outs, the batter hits a fly ball handled by the out fielder or an in fielder running in the out fielder, it doesn't matter if it's fair or foul territory, again that fielder catches the ball and then the runner tags up from third base, runs home and scores, so that is the main definition, but the second part is that if the ball is dropped and the runner scores, if in the scores judgment, the run could have scored after the catch had that catch been made, so basically what we're saying here is that we have our batter, we have a runner on third base, we have our out fielder out here, whoops, the out fielder would be on the other team, so we have our long fly ball hit out here to right field and the right fielder gets under it like he's going to catch it and this is going to be a typical sacrifice fly play, only for whatever reason he does not catch the ball, he drops the ball, just makes an error on it, so then the runners of course, they are free to run because the ball has not been caught, so they don't even have to tag up, they can run home, and so then what this rule is saying is that this play would still be scored a sacrifice fly and an error, so it would be that this runner is advancing to first base on, say a sack fly and then E9 or whichever the fielder is that messed the play up, and so what that's going to do, kind of why that is there is that if you just called it an error, that would then kind of decrease from the stats of the batter, so he would be over one if this was his first bat, and it's really not his fault because he did hit the ball deep enough to have a sacrifice fly, so I don't know if he would be too disappointed because obviously he's getting on base and the runner is scoring, but the rules are saying hey he did have enough for a sacrifice fly, so we aren't going to make him over one, that would sacrifice, of course do not count as at bats, so he would be 0 for 0, so the thing really here that the scorer where the judgment call is made is that where that ball is caught, so if the outfielder or if it's an infielder and he is really close, so if the play is made or the ball is caught in here closer to the infielder, closer to second base, I think even more so if it was made on this side of the field, then the scorer could say that that ball was not deep enough to have scored him, and so then it would just, if it's caught it would just be the pop-up then, but if the ball is deep, you know if it's on the warning track, obviously that that scorer would probably give the runner the benefit of the doubt that he would, the runner would have been able to score, so the batter then get credit for that sack fly, but then obviously where it becomes kind of a gray area is whenever you get into medium depth, so it's really the scorer's call you might have to take into account how fast is the runner, things like that, that Woody had been able to score had that ball been caught, so what we're kind of on this topic of unusual sacrifice fly plays, the rules make one more comment about this situation occurring, and so that kind of second part of the rule is that if this situation were to occur where the ball is, the ball is dropped, then the official scorer shall score a sacrifice fly even if another runner is forced out because the batter has become a runner, so what does that all mean? So this is saying that if we have a situation here, so typically if we have a runner on first base, it doesn't matter what the other runners are, and this the batter would would hit a line drive into the outfield, line drive base hit no problem gets through the infield, and for whatever reason this runner is really slow or maybe he trips and he falls down and the outfielder is able to run up catch or you wouldn't be catching the ball, this would be a ground ball, he would get to the ball and he would be able to throw that ball into second so that to to force the this runner out, so this runner who was not started the playoff first base was forced out at second base, so he is out just because it was a line drive into center field doesn't mean that that is a base hit for the batter, that would actually be scored if field was choice, it's just like if the shortstop would have picked the ball from foot to the second baseman to force the runner out, it's the same thing if the center fielder or another outfielder picks the ball up and forces that runner out at second base, it's still a fielder's choice for the batter, and so that's what this play or this rule is saying that even if this happens and the runner is forced out it's still considered a sacrificed fly for the batter and so in this play would probably have runners on the corners, the ball would be hit out to the outfield everybody's thinking he's going to catch it and the last second he misses it, the right fielder misses the ball, it falls to the ground, this runner runs home obviously to score that run and you can kind of understand why this play would have happened because if this right fielder is kind of camped under the ball this runner on first base is probably going to assume he's going to catch it so he's not going to get too far off the base and then obviously this right fielder is going to pick the ball up and throw it back in to get the out at second base and to force this runner but because of this part of the rule we're saying that it is still scored a sacrificed fly on the part of the batter so again this is going to be a sack fly and then probably an error on the right fielder for him there he will get credit for the RBI and then this this the runner who was on first base would simply be put out through a 9-6 maybe this is the short stop covering second base and so that would be the out on the play there although that of course is just the second part of the rule after all this this video is about sacrifice fly without an out and that right there is how you can have that sacrifice fly without an out occurring on the play