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Why is the form "flied" used in baseball instead of "flew"?

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    Notwithstanding the accuracy of the two answers below, the Oakland Athletics had an otherwise very competent radio play-by-play man a decade or so ago who insisted on saying things like "He flew out to center field in the second [inning]." At the other end of the spectrum, I can imagine someone saying of a frog that had been catching flies all day and no longer seemed interested in them, "I guess he's flied out."
    – Sven Yargs
    Commented May 17, 2016 at 3:41

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The form "flied" is used in baseball because the verb fly in this case means to hit a fly ball.

It is probably safe to assume that this usage is a transformation of the noun fly ball (also called a fly) into a verb, and noun→verb transformations such as this are often regularized

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The term is only useful in baseball in reference to a "fly-ball".

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When the fly ball is caught by a member of the opposing team, and it is in bounds, the batter is out and the play is recorded as a “fly out.” The batter can then be said to have flied out.

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