Umpires awarded weirdest HR after Giants prospect dropped ball over the fence despite making the catch

Somehow, it was the right call.

The NFL struggles with the concept every season: What is a catch? Plays that certainly look like catches are ruled incomplete. Simply put, nobody knows what a catch is. Baseball, though, shouldn’t have that problem.

But during Sunday’s minor league game between Triple-A clubs Sacramento River Cats (Giants) and Oklahoma City Dodgers, we saw a quirk of baseball’s catch rules come into play in a huge way.

With no outs in the fourth inning and nobody on, the Dodgers’ Devin Mann hit a deep fly ball to center field that appeared to be caught on the run in the warning track by Bryce Johnson. It was undeniable: Johnson had the ball in his glove.

Yet, Johnson’s momentum carried him to the wall. He leaped towards the fence to slow himself down or possibly add some showmanship to the catch. But as he did that, he lost the ball and dropped it on the other side of the wall. Umpires ruled the play as a home run.

While Johnson took several steps after catching the ball, baseball requires the fielder to either maintain possession or voluntarily release the ball. The umpires thought that Johnson did neither of those as he accidentally dropped the ball while still in the process of completing the entire sequence.

The broadcast seemed to think that the umpires missed the call, but in the scope of the rules, it was correct. Either way, it was one of the stranger home runs we’ll ever see.