William S. Stevens, whose slyly humorous law-review note on the relationship between baseball’s infield fly rule and Anglo-American common law became one of the most celebrated and imitated analyses in American legal history, died Monday in Anchorage, where he was working. He was 60 and lived in Narberth, Pa.

The cause was a heart attack, said T. Dennis Sullivan, his brother-in-law.

Mr. Stevens was a law student at the University of Pennsylvania in 1975 when he wrote an anonymous note for the university’s law review that drew an ingenious analogy between the infield fly rule and development of common law.

“The dynamics of the common law and the development of one of the most important technical rules of baseball, although on the surface almost completely different in outlook and philosophy, share significant elements,” he wrote.

Published as a semi-parodic “aside” in June 1975, “The Common Law Origins of the Infield Fly Rule” quickly achieved legal fame, in part because nothing like it had ever appeared in a major law review, in part because of its concise, elegant reasoning. It continues to be cited by courts and legal commentators. It is taught in law schools. It is credited with giving birth to the law and baseball movement, a thriving branch of legal studies devoted to the law and its social context. It made lawyers think about the law in a different way.