Dodgers prospect homers on controversial dropped ball

“What is a catch?” has been a easy, but essential query bedeviling sports activities followers for years.

It’s probably the most primary performs in sports activities — each baseball and soccer — however its subjective nature makes for some controversial calls and weird performs.

The newest entry into the “What is a catch?” lexicon comes by way of Triple-A Oklahoma City after Dodgers utilityman Devin Mann hit one of many extra unconventional residence runs of the yr in a 6-4 win over host Sacramento on Sunday afternoon.

Leading off the highest of the fourth inning, the Dodgers’ No. 30 prospect knocked a ball into the hole in right-center subject. River Cats heart fielder Bryce Johnson received an ideal soar and tracked down the ball with ease. But after corralling the ball on the warning observe, Johnson took 4 steps and by chance deposited the ball over the fence.

The preliminary name on the sphere was an out, so Mann hustled again to the dugout and sat down. After a number of seconds, the umpires gathered and dominated the play a house run — so the 26-year-old stood again up and launched into his strangest journey ever across the bases.

“From my point of view, it looked like a pretty solid catch,” mentioned Mann, who performed left on Sunday. “But I don’t know all the ins and outs of how they get to the conclusion of it being a home run. But, shoot, I’ll take it.”

Sports followers are absolutely too acquainted with the time period “football move” when evaluating a catch within the NFL. But baseball guidelines are totally different — 4 steps alone don’t a catch make. The fielder has to display management of the ball — which is as much as the umpire’s judgment — and make a voluntary and intentional launch of the ball.

Baseball’s official rulebook places it this manner: “It is not a catch, however, if simultaneously or immediately following his contact with the ball, he collides with a player, or with a wall, or if he falls down, and as a result of such collision or falling, drops the ball.”

As the umpires later defined to Mann, they search for a number of issues when contemplating the play, together with whether or not the fielder slowed down or made an try together with his hand to take the ball out of his glove, neither of which the fielder did.

An Indiana native who performed collegiately at Louisville, Mann is a soccer fan and remembers speaking with associates about among the most controversial “catches” in soccer. Little did he count on that in the future his personal homer, the sixty fifth of his Minor League profession, would spawn a brand new catch vs. non-catch debate.

“It’s kind of crazy too because I remember watching the Dez Bryant one in Green Bay (in 2015) and same thing with Calvin Johnson (with the Lions in 2010),” Mann mentioned. “I don’t know who’s making the rules and who gets to make the final decision on that, but it’s a lot of gray area for something that I feel like, personally, there’s not a lot of gray area. … But I feel once you slow it down and look at it, that’s where all the gray area comes into play.”