The facts
The Milwaukee Brewers won Game 1 of the National League Division Series on Oct. 3 thanks to a play nobody at American Family Field had ever seen. With the Brewers leading by a run, a runner on first and one out in the top of the ninth, San Diego’s Ty France lofted a roof-scraping fly ball off Brewers closer Trevor Megill. It collided with a support cable above the outfield and ricocheted into Jackson Chourio’s glove.
Nobody agreed on where it was headed. Padres manager Craig Stammen thought it was a home run. Brewers catcher William Contreras concurred, saying he worried about the glass panels above the second deck in left field. France himself thought so. Megill’s own account of watching it leave the bat: “Oh crap,” he recounted thinking. Brewers manager Pat Murphy swore the opposite: “It was going to be a foul ball,” Murphy said. “It was going to be a foul ball for sure. I’m standing right on that line.” The one person who actually tracked it, Chourio, was dubious: "Off the bat, I thought it was going for a second," he said. "I was able to see it and think I had a chance on the ball the whole time. I'm not sure, but I think that ball might have tailed foul at the end."
Stammen suggested plugging the exit velocity and launch angle into AI to determine whether the ball would have dingered or not. The math says it wouldn’t have: no ball at France’s 49-degree launch angle and 105.3 mph exit velocity has ever gone for a home run since Statcast began in 2015, and the expected batting average on it was .050. The ball traveled an estimated 325 feet; it would have needed at least 18 more feet to clear the 342-foot fence.
Per the park’s ground rules, a ball striking the cables in fair territory is fair and live, a scenario that had come up at that day’s pregame umpire’s meeting. The Padres challenged the fair-territory call, which was never going to be overturned on replay. Crew chief Alfonso Marquez’s stadium audio cut out during the confusion for good measure.
Murphy offered the only explanation his dugout needed: “Ueck decided to put his hand on it and swat it down so Chourio could catch it,” he said, alluding to the late legendary broadcaster Bob Uecker. “So thanks, Ueck.”
The same kind of rule had already burned these Padres once this season: on Aug. 28, a Xander Bogaerts no-doubt homer hit a catwalk in Tampa and caromed back to be caught. As Stammen put it, it was the second time it had happened to them.
Our take
Of course this bullshit decided a playoff game. A 49-degree launch angle is the baseball equivalent of a fucking punt, and yet everyone in the park - except the guy who actually caught it - thought they just witnessed a miracle. Padres manager Craig Stammen thought it was gone. Brewers catcher William Contreras was worried about it breaking glass. The pitcher’s entire thought process was “Oh crap.” It’s a room full of professional baseball men watching a glorified pop-up and having a collective stroke. Pathetic.
Then you have Pat Murphy, the Brewers’ skipper, standing in the dugout like a clairvoyant fucking traffic cop. “It was going to be a foul ball for sure. I’m standing right on that line.” You’re standing on the bench, you arrogant prick. The outfielder who caught the goddamn thing said he wasn’t sure. But sure, Pat, your view from between the Gatorade cooler and the bat rack is the definitive one. Your entire argument is so shitty you had to summon a ghost to back it up. “Ueck decided to put his hand on it.” No, a cable your cheap-as-fuck stadium hung in the field of play decided to put its metal dick on it.
The Padres are the biggest losers in this, because they are apparently cursed to have their homers eaten by stadium fixtures. This is the second time this season a no-doubt jack has hit a catwalk or a cable and come back. They are a $200 million roster that loses to interior design. Stammen’s big-brain solution is to ask AI if it was a homer. You don’t need a fucking algorithm, Craig. You need a contractor. The math says no ball hit that hard at that stupid angle has ever been a home run. It was a 325-foot out that needed a cable to even get that far.
So the final score was determined by a piece of rigging and a manager so up his own ass he’s crediting corpses. The ghost of Bob Uecker didn’t swat shit. A billion-dollar sport just got its outcome decided by a glorified clothesline. What a fucking joke.
