Oh what a night!

On to serious stuff now.

In my athletic days (slow-pitch softball, like bowling, is considered an athletic activity by some), I was called upon late in a game to be the catcher (something to do with my not catching balls in the outfield). Our center fielder had a cannon for an arm, and ran down a ball in the gap and got it back to me at the plate quickly. That took the other team by surprise, and there I stood at home plate, ball in glove and two runners having crossed third base. I tagged each of them, one of the most unusual double plays ever in the annals of the game. The second runner, probably out of embarrassment, tried to run me over, Pete Rose fashion. But as I discovered on further examination, I had held onto the ball. (He was called out for running into me, not allowed in slow-pitch, but he was out anyway.)

That event came to memory as I watched a baseball game last night – something far more unlikely happened. Cincinnati’s Mike Leake, Zach Cozart and Drew Stubbs hit back-to-back-to-back home runs, unusual. But the really amazing thing was that one fan in the center field bleachers caught two of them.

Imagine that there were 23,000 fans in the ball park. The odds of any one of them catching an errant ball are, say 20 in 23,000, or 1/1,150. The odds of the same person catching two would then be 1/1,322,500.

What a night for 20-year old Caleb Lloyd! He was invited up to the broadcast booth during and down to the locker room after the game, and even standing among all those millionaires, wanted no money for Leake’s home run ball (it was his first major league home run).