Foul Ball Rules in Baseball: Fair or Foul and the Count

Chalk jumps behind third base and the umpire points toward the infield with one arm. He says nothing, because a fair ball gets a signal and no call. Under the Official Baseball Rules that Major League Baseball plays by, the foul lines, the foul poles and the bags at first and third all lie in fair territory, so a batted ball that touches any of them is in play. The names are a century-old accident.

The rest of the foul ball rules come in two parts. A ball hit in front of first or third base is foul if it comes to rest in foul territory, is first touched by a fielder over foul territory, or is over foul ground when it bounces past the bag, and where it first hit the dirt is irrelevant. A ball hit in the air beyond the bases is the opposite case: it is foul if it first lands in foul territory. On the count, a foul is a strike only until the batter has two. After that an ordinary foul changes nothing, with two exceptions that end the at-bat, a bunt fouled off with two strikes and a foul caught before it touches the ground.

Fair ball vs foul ball: the definitions MLB works from

Neither term has a numbered rule of its own. Both live in the Definitions of Terms at the back of the rulebook, and the foul ball entry has four limbs. A batted ball is foul if it settles on foul territory between home and first base, or between home and third. It is foul if it bounds past first or third base on or over foul territory. It is foul if it first falls on foul territory beyond first or third base. And it is foul if, with the ball on or over foul territory, it touches the person of an umpire or player, or any object foreign to the natural ground.

The fair ball entry is the mirror image with one addition that settles a great many arguments. A batted ball that touches first, second or third base is fair.

Two sentences attached to those definitions do more work than the definitions themselves. One says a fly ball is judged by the relative position of the ball and the foul line, including the foul pole, and not by whether the fielder is standing on fair or foul ground when he touches it. The other covers an oddity: a batted ball that no fielder has touched, that hits the pitcher's rubber and rebounds into foul ground between home and first or between home and third, is a foul ball. It looks like a comebacker. It is strike one.

What the batted ball does	Ruling
Stops in foul ground before reaching first or third base	Foul
Is touched by a fielder over foul ground before reaching the bag	Foul
Lands foul, rolls back and stops on fair ground short of the bag	Fair
Lands fair, then bounces past the bag over foul ground	Foul
Hits first or third base and caroms into foul ground	Fair
Bounces in the infield, crosses over the bag, then lands foul	Fair
Carries past the bag in the air and first lands on the line	Fair
Carries past the bag in the air and first lands foul by an inch	Foul
Strikes the foul pole above the top of the wall	Fair, and a home run

The NCAA and the National Federation of State High School Associations, whose book governs most American high school baseball, define fair and foul the same way in substance. This is one of the few corners of the sport where a fan can walk from a high school field to a big league park without relearning anything. What differs is the machinery around the call, meaning how many umpires are on the field to make it and whether anyone is allowed to look at it again.

The foul call is loud on purpose. Both arms go up, the umpire shouts "Foul," and the ball is dead from that instant, which is why a mistaken foul call on the infield is so hard to repair. Nobody can say what the runners would have done. A fair ball gets a point and silence so that nobody stops running.

Is the foul line fair or foul? Fair, and so is the pole

Start with the geometry. Fair territory is the part of the field inside the first-base and third-base lines, running from home plate to the bottom of the outfield fence and straight up from there, and the rulebook's definition counts the lines themselves as part of it. The chalk is the last few inches of fair ground. A ball that lands with any part of it on the line has landed fair.

The bases follow from the lines. The field layout in Rule 2.01 puts the first-base and third-base bags entirely inside the infield, with their outer edges along the line, so no part of either bag hangs into foul ground. When MLB enlarged the bases from 15 inches square to 18 inches in 2023, the added canvas grew inward. The foul side did not move.

Then the pole. It is planted where the line meets the fence, which makes it a vertical extension of the fair side of the boundary. A fly ball that hits it above the top of the wall has left the field in flight over fair territory. Home run. The ball can ricochet anywhere afterward, back onto the warning track or into the foul seats, and nothing changes.

Two poles with names

Fenway Park has named both of its poles. The one in right, 302 feet from the plate down the line, is Pesky's Pole. The one in left became the Fisk Pole after Carlton Fisk's twelfth-inning home run in Game 6 of the 1975 World Series, the drive he tried to wave fair as he hopped up the first-base line. The waving was for television. The ball needed only to touch yellow paint, and it did. Our history of Fenway Park has more on both.

"Fair line" and "fair pole" would be the accurate names, and people have proposed them for decades without success. The misnomers survive because the line marks the place where foul territory begins, which is how players have always thought about it.

The infield test: where the ball is, not where it bounced

1. 1First bounceThe ball hits the dirt on either side of the line. Nothing is decided yet and the umpire makes no signal.
2. 2TouchedA fielder touches it. The ball is fair or foul according to where the ball was at that moment, whatever the fielder's feet were doing.
3. 3Hits the bagIt strikes first or third base. It is fair, wherever it caroms next.
4. 4Passes the bagIt bounces past the base untouched. It is fair if it crossed over the bag or inside it, foul if it went by outside.
5. 5StopsIt dies short of the base. It is fair or foul by where it lies, and a ball resting on the chalk is fair.

The order of events that fixes fair or foul for a batted ball that touches the ground before reaching first or third base, under the Definitions of Terms in the Official Baseball Rules. The first one to happen decides it.

A ground ball or a bunt has no status when it first hits the dirt. It acquires one when the first of several things happens: a fielder touches it, it hits a base, it passes first or third, it strikes something that does not belong there, or it stops rolling.

That is why a ball can land fair and end up foul. A swinging bunt lands a foot inside the third-base line with sidespin on it and curls across the chalk before the third baseman arrives. If he grabs it over foul ground, or lets it die there, it is a foul ball and the batter goes back to the box.

It works in the other direction too. A ball off the end of the bat hits the dirt outside the first-base line, catches the lip of the grass and trickles back inside. If it stops there or is picked up there it is fair, and the hitter who stood admiring it is thrown out by forty feet. Coaches at every level teach batters to run until they hear the word "foul" for exactly this reason.

At the bag

For a bouncing ball, the base is the finish line. A grounder skipping along just outside the line that hits the outer edge of third and kicks toward the tarp is fair and live, usually for two bases. One that bounces directly over any part of the bag and then lands in foul ground beyond it is fair as well, because it was over fair territory when it passed. The third-base umpire sets up straddling the line behind the bag to see that single frame.

A line drive is different. If the ball has not touched the ground when it passes the bag, the bag is irrelevant and the next section's test applies.

The fielder's feet do not count

A first baseman with both feet in foul territory who reaches across the line and gloves a ball that is over fair ground has touched a fair ball. Swap everything around and the ball is foul. The rule looks only at where the ball was at the instant of the touch, and the touch is final: a ball deflected off a glove over fair territory that then rolls to the dugout railing is a fair ball with a runner circling the bases.

When the ball hits something that is not a fielder

A batted ball over foul ground that strikes a bat rack, a rolled-up tarp, a discarded catcher's mask or the plate umpire is foul at once. In fair territory, a ball that rolls against a bat the hitter dropped or a helmet that fell off a runner stays live if nobody meant it to happen, and it is then judged like any other ball. Intent changes that. A runner who kicks a fair ball on purpose is out for interference.

The outfield test, where only the landing spot matters

Past first and third the logic flips. A fly ball or a line drive that carries beyond the bases in the air is fair or foul by where it first comes down, or where a fielder first touches it, and it keeps that status for good. A liner that lands an inch inside the right-field line and spins into the corner in foul ground is a fair ball, likely a double. A fly that lands a foot outside the line and hops back onto the grass is a foul ball and nothing more.

Why two tests? Because the infield ball is still being contested when it crosses the line and the outfield ball is not. A roller can be picked up, kicked, left alone or smothered, so the rule waits for one of those things to happen. A fly ball two hundred feet from the plate is going to hit something exactly once before anyone can affect it.

Here again the judgment is made on the ball. A left fielder running in foul territory who reaches back over the line and touches a ball that is above fair ground has touched a fair ball. If he drops it, it is live, and the batter is on his way to second. This is the reason an outfielder with no real chance at a catch will sometimes pull his glove back from a ball drifting along the line. Touching it can only hurt him.

Over the fence and around the pole

A ball that clears the wall is judged at the point where it leaves the playing field. A drive that passes on the fair side of the pole and then hooks into the foul seats in the upper deck is a home run, and one that passes on the foul side and blows back is a long strike. Umpires working the line are taught to watch the pole and let the ball come to it.

Deflections have their own awards. A fair fly ball that glances off an outfielder's glove and goes over the fence in fair territory is a home run. If it glances off him and into the stands on the foul side, the batter gets two bases, one of several awards covered on our page about the ground rule double.

Home plate, the batter's box and a ball off the hitter

One of the sport's most durable playground beliefs is that a ball hitting home plate is automatically foul. It is not. The plate, the five-sided slab 17 inches across its front edge, sits in fair territory with its point at the spot where the two foul lines meet. A pitch chopped straight down onto it is an infield ball like any other and goes through the test above. If it bounces up and the catcher grabs it over fair ground, it is fair, and the batter needs to be running.

The batter's boxes are a different matter because they straddle the lines. Each box is 4 feet wide and 6 feet long, and part of each lies in fair territory and part in foul. The rulebook handles the overlap with a single practical rule in 5.09(a)(7): a batted ball that strikes the batter, or his bat a second time, when he is still in a legal position in the box is a foul ball, provided the umpire sees no intent to interfere. The ball is dead. It is a strike if he had fewer than two.

Fouling a pitch off the front foot is the everyday version. The hitter hops, the ball rolls out toward the mound, and the plate umpire kills it. The difficulty is that the plate umpire is the person on the field least able to see the batter's feet, since the catcher is crouched in the way, and a foul off the instep that nobody saw is a 15-foot ground ball that the catcher throws to first.

Once the batter is out of the box the same contact has the opposite result. A fair ball that touches the batter-runner before it touches a fielder puts him out, the ball is dead, and no runner may advance. The classic case is a chopper in front of the plate that the batter runs into on his second step.

The bat

A bat gets the same treatment as the body. If the ball comes back and hits the bat a second time before the hitter has left the box, it is foul. If he has dropped the bat in fair territory and the ball rolls into it by accident, the ball stays live. If he is out of the box and the bat in his hands hits the ball again over fair ground, he is out.

Fouls and the count: a strike until the batter has two

The rulebook's definition of a strike lists the ways a pitch becomes one. Item (c) reads that a strike is a legal pitch that "is fouled by the batter when he has less than two strikes." Everything after the word "batter" is the foul-strike rule.

After 1 foul1strikes

After 2 fouls2strikes

After 3 fouls2strikes

After 4 fouls2strikes

After 5 fouls2strikes

After 6 fouls2strikes

A plate appearance starting at no strikes in which every pitch is fouled off with a full swing and none is caught. Under the definition of a strike in the Official Baseball Rules the count stops moving after the second foul.

Show the numbers

Strikes on the batter after each successive foul

Item	Value
After 1 foul	1strikes
After 2 fouls	2strikes
After 3 fouls	2strikes
After 4 fouls	2strikes
After 5 fouls	2strikes
After 6 fouls	2strikes

So the sequence runs strike one, strike two and then nothing. A hitter with two strikes can foul off pitch after pitch without penalty, and nothing in the rules sets a limit. Every such foul is a small win for the batter: he has seen another pitch, the pitcher has thrown another one, and the count is no worse.

Those fouls carry a name in the dugout. Hitters call it spoiling a pitch, getting a piece of something too close to take and too good to drive. The skill is real, and it sits close to the edge of the strike zone as umpires call it, since the pitches being spoiled are the ones a hitter cannot afford to leave to the umpire.

Brandon Belt and the 21-pitch at-bat

• 21Pitches Belt saw
• 16Pitches Belt fouled off
• 20Pitches in the previous record

Brandon Belt of the San Francisco Giants against Jaime Barria of the Los Angeles Angels, April 22, 2018. The 16 fouls are the total for the plate appearance, nearly all of them hit with two strikes. Pitch-by-pitch counts have been kept reliably only since 1988, so longer plate appearances before then cannot be ruled out.

On April 22, 2018, at Angel Stadium in Anaheim, Giants first baseman Brandon Belt came up in the first inning against Angels rookie Jaime Barria and stayed for 21 pitches. He fouled off 16 of them, all but one or two with two strikes already on him. The plate appearance ran past 12 minutes and ended with a ball caught by right fielder Kole Calhoun, an out in the box score that had cost the pitcher about a fifth of a normal night's work.

It broke a mark of 20 pitches set on June 26, 1998, when Houston's Ricky Gutierrez dueled Cleveland's Bartolo Colon. Belt's figure was still the longest on record through the 2025 season, with the caveat that the record book starts in 1988 and that a total like this moves whenever someone has a longer afternoon.

The pitch timer MLB introduced in 2023 changed the pace between those pitches. It did not change their number. A foul still resets the at-bat to wherever it was, and a hitter who can keep spoiling pitches may do so until one of the two men gives in.

The fouls that end an at-bat anyway

Three kinds of foul are exempt from the two-strike amnesty.

Type of foul	When it ends the at-bat	How it is scored	Ball live or dead
Ordinary foul that reaches the ground	Never	A strike with fewer than two, nothing with two	Dead
Bunt fouled off	With two strikes	Strikeout	Dead
Foul fly caught before it lands	On any count	Fly out or pop out	Live
Foul tip held by the catcher	With two strikes	Strikeout	Live
Ball off the batter in the box	Never	A strike with fewer than two, nothing with two	Dead

The two-strike bunt

Rule 5.09(a)(4) puts a batter out when "he bunts foul on third strike." The logic is about how easy the act is. Fouling off a 96-mile-an-hour fastball with a full swing takes rare hand-eye coordination. Deadening one into foul ground with a bat held out over the plate takes much less, and a hitter allowed to do it without limit could stand there all night.

The call turns on what a bunt is. The rulebook defines it as a batted ball "not swung at, but intentionally met with the bat and tapped slowly within the infield." A hitter who squares around, pulls the bat back and takes a full cut has swung, and a foul from that swing with two strikes is an ordinary foul. A slap or a half-swing is the umpire's judgment. Pitchers batting with two strikes and a runner to move over used to live inside this rule, which is why so many sacrifice attempts ended in strikeouts.

The caught foul fly

A foul ball caught before it touches the ground is an out on any count. It is not a strikeout, and the ball stays live, which matters to the runners and is covered below.

Fielders may reach into the seats or over a dugout railing to make the catch. A fan in his own seat has as much right to the ball as the fielder, so there is no interference on a ball over the stands. A fielder who makes a legal catch and then tumbles into the seats or the dugout has still recorded the out, and every runner is awarded one base.

The foul tip, in one paragraph

A pitch that nicks the bat, goes sharp and direct into the catcher's mitt and stays there is not a foul ball at all in the rulebook's terms. It is a foul tip, which counts as a strike on any count including the third, and the ball remains in play. If the catcher does not hold it, it is an ordinary foul. The distinction has its own page: see our guide to the foul tip rule.

One thing a foul can never be is an uncaught third strike. A two-strike pitch that is fouled into the dirt and skips away from the catcher is a dead ball, and the batter is going nowhere. He may run only on a third strike that he missed or took, which is the subject of the dropped third strike page.

What a foul does to the runners

Rule 5.06(c)(5) is brief: the ball becomes dead when "a foul ball is not caught," and runners return. They go back without liability to be put out, and the umpire does not put the ball back in play until each has retouched his base.

That wipes out everything that happened on the pitch. A runner who had second base stolen standing up walks back to first. A hit-and-run that had the shortstop out of position is canceled. With two outs and a full count the runners take off on every pitch, and a hitter who fouls off five in a row sends them on five sprints that count for nothing.

A caught foul fly is a different animal. The ball is live, the batter is out, and a runner may tag up and advance at his own risk exactly as he would on a fly ball to center. A run that scores this way is a sacrifice fly. The mechanics are on our page about tagging up.

That produces one of the stranger sights in the sport. Bottom of the ninth, tie game, a runner on third with fewer than two outs, and a deep fly ball drifting toward the seats down the right-field line. The right fielder gets under it and lets it drop. He has not misjudged it. Catching the ball would let the winning run tag and score, so he trades the out for a strike, or for nothing at all if the hitter already had two.

Letting it go foul, and helping it along

May 27, 1981, the Kingdome in Seattle. Kansas City's Amos Otis topped a slow roller down the third-base line, and Mariners third baseman Lenny Randle, seeing he had no play at first, got down on his hands and knees beside the ball and blew on it. It rolled foul.

Plate umpire Larry McCoy called it foul. Royals manager Jim Frey came out to argue, the umpires talked it over, and McCoy reversed himself and sent Otis to first base. Randle's defense afterward was that he had only been talking to the ball.

The first half of what Randle did is ordinary good defense. A fielder with no play may leave a roller alone and hope it drifts across the line, and third basemen do it on bunts many times a season. The gamble is that the ball stops on the chalk, or six inches inside it, and becomes a single nobody tried to prevent.

The second half is where he lost. A fielder is allowed to touch the ball, which fixes its status at the spot where he touches it. What he may not do is change its course without touching it. The text of the Official Baseball Rules has never contained a sentence about breath, and the ruling rests on the general authority Rule 8.01(c) gives an umpire over any point the rules do not specifically cover. Fanning the ball with a glove or a cap would be judged in the same way.

Umpires, coaches and spectators

A batted ball that touches an umpire over foul territory is foul. In fair territory it depends on timing. If it hits him before it has touched a fielder and before it has passed an infielder other than the pitcher, the ball is dead and the batter is awarded first base. If it has already gone by an infielder, it stays in play.

Base coaches stand in boxes in foul ground, so a roller that is still undecided and bumps into the third-base coach is a foul ball. A ball that was already fair, having passed the bag inside the line, and then strikes a coach who could not get out of the way stays live under Rule 6.01(d). Deliberate interference by a coach is another matter and kills the play.

A spectator who reaches out of the stands and touches a live ball has committed interference under Rule 6.01(e). The ball is dead and the umpires place the runners, and may call the batter out, according to what they judge would have happened. The line is the plane of the wall. On the foul fly down the left-field line at Wrigley Field in Game 6 of the 2003 National League Championship Series, the umpires ruled that the ball was over the seats when fans' hands reached it, so no interference was called.

Which fair-or-foul calls replay review can correct

Fewer than most fans assume. MLB's replay regulations make a fair-or-foul call reviewable only on a ball that first lands at or beyond the set position of the first-base or third-base umpire. Balls that first land in front of those umpires are excluded by name, and so are line drives fielded by an infielder.

1. 1The callThe umpire responsible rules fair with a point or foul with both arms raised, and play continues or stops accordingly.
2. 2The landing spotIf the ball first landed in front of the first-base or third-base umpire's set position, the ruling is final.
3. 3The challengeIf it first landed at or beyond that position, the manager may challenge, and the crew chief may start a review on a home run call.
4. 4The reviewA replay official in New York changes the call only if the video evidence is clear and convincing.
5. 5The placementIf foul becomes fair, the replay official places the batter and each runner where he judges they would have ended up.

The route a fair-or-foul ruling takes under MLB's replay regulations. Balls that first land in front of the base umpire never enter it.

The line was drawn where it is for a practical reason. When a ball in the outfield corner is wrongly called foul, the replay official can make a fair guess at the outcome: the batter gets a double, the runner from first goes to third. When a chopper in front of the bag is wrongly called foul, the catcher has stopped, the batter has stopped, and nobody can say whether the play at first would have been close. So the regulation leaves that call alone. A chopper in front of the bag belongs to the umpire who saw it.

Boundary calls came first. Baseball began using video to check home run calls in August 2008, six years before the manager's challenge existed, and whether a ball passed fair or foul of the pole was among the original questions it could answer. A pole call can still be reviewed at the crew chief's initiative. The limits on challenges and the full list of reviewable plays are set out in our guide to MLB's replay review rules.

Going the other way is simpler. A ball ruled fair on the field and foul on review erases the play. The runners go back, and the batter picks up a strike if he had fewer than two.

How fouls became strikes in 1901 and 1903

For most of the nineteenth century a foul ball was nothing. It was not a strike and not a ball. If a fielder caught it the batter was out, and for many years a foul caught on the first bounce was an out too, but a foul that reached the ground simply did not count. A pitcher could throw fifteen good pitches to one man and have nothing to show for it.

Hitters noticed. The Baltimore Orioles of the 1890s, John McGraw and Willie Keeler among them, made a habit of slapping pitches foul until they got one they liked or the pitcher missed four times. Roy Thomas, a center fielder who joined the Philadelphia Phillies in 1899, became the most notorious practitioner. Thomas had almost no power and did not need any. He fouled off pitches until he walked, and accounts from the period have him spoiling well over a dozen in a single trip.

The rule makers had already nibbled at the problem. In the middle of the 1890s a foul bunt was made a strike, on the theory that it was an obvious attempt to hit the ball foul, and a tip caught by the catcher became a strike in the same period. Neither touched the full swing.

In 1901 the National League went the rest of the way: any foul not caught on the fly would be a strike unless the batter already had two. The American League, in its first season as a major league, did not go along, and for two years the leagues played under different counts. That is part of the context for Nap Lajoie's .426 average in the American League of 1901, compiled in a league where a foul off a full swing was not yet a strike. The AL adopted the rule for 1903 as part of the peace settlement between the leagues.

Strikeouts rose and scoring fell in each league the year the rule arrived, one of the conditions behind the low-scoring years later named the dead-ball era. Thomas barely noticed. He led the National League in walks in six of the next seven seasons.

Read today, the foul-strike rule is a pace-of-play measure adopted a century before anyone used the phrase.

Foul balls in the seats: souvenirs, netting and the law

No playing rule says the fan keeps the ball. It is a custom, and a younger one than the foul-strike rule. Early clubs treated a ball in the stands as their property and sent ushers to get it back. The change is usually credited to two episodes: the Chicago Cubs' decision under Charles Weeghman in 1916 to let customers keep what they caught, and the case of Reuben Berman, a fan ejected from the Polo Grounds in 1921 for refusing to hand over a foul ball, who sued the New York Giants and won. By the middle of the century a ball in the seats belonged to whoever came up with it.

The darker side of the foul ball is speed. A line drive pulled into the seats behind a dugout arrives in about a second, and for most of baseball's history the only protection was a backstop screen behind home plate.

That changed in stages. After a young girl was struck by a line drive at Yankee Stadium in September 2017, every MLB club extended its netting to at least the far ends of the dugouts for the 2018 season. In May 2019 a small child was badly hurt by a foul ball in Houston, and that December Commissioner Rob Manfred announced that all 30 clubs would extend their netting again for 2020.

By the commissioner's description at the time, seven clubs would have netting all the way to the foul poles and fifteen more were adding to theirs, most of them out to the elbow where the stands angle away from the field. The remaining eight already had netting that ran well beyond the far end of the dugouts. Clubs have altered their netting since.

The Baseball Rule

The law has long been on the clubs' side. Under a doctrine that courts call the Baseball Rule, or the limited duty rule, a ballpark owner's obligation is to screen the most dangerous seats, those behind home plate, and to offer enough of them for the spectators who want protection. A fan sitting anywhere else is treated as having accepted the ordinary risks of the game. The doctrine is usually traced to a 1913 decision of a Missouri appeals court involving the Kansas City club, and the fine print on the back of a ticket restates it.

It has held up for more than a century, though not everywhere. Some states have written it into statute. Courts in a few others have declined to adopt it or have narrowed it, reasoning that a rule built for the wooden grandstands of 1913 fits poorly in parks where seats sit closer to the plate and fans are encouraged to look at a video board. The netting went up without any court ordering it.

One last distinction keeps the souvenir custom from colliding with the playing rules. A ball that has come to the fan is the fan's. A fan who goes to the ball, leaning over the rail and into the field of play, has interfered with it, and at a big league park that usually ends with an usher walking the fan out.

For more on how the sport is played and scored in the United States, the baseball section collects the site's other explainers.