There are losses you can explain with a bad pitch or a bad decision. Then there’s losing a playoff game because the building decided to get involved.

The Padres were down 3-2 in the ninth inning of Game 1 of the NLDS, but they were one swing away from turning the whole thing around. Dustin Harris had singled, there was one out, and Brewers closer Trevor Megill threw Ty France a 98.9 mph fastball. France smoked it at 105.3 mph toward the left-field corner.

He didn’t run right away. He watched it, because he thought he’d just hit a go-ahead two-run homer.

Then the ball hit a cable hanging from the closed roof at American Family Field, changed direction, and dropped into Jackson Chourio’s glove on the warning track.

Out.

Not a blown call. Not even really a controversial one. Just one of the dumbest correct calls you’ll ever see.

Milwaukee’s ground rules say a batted ball that hits the roof, a truss, or a cable over fair territory stays live. If a fielder catches it, the batter’s out. San Diego challenged, arguing that the ball hit the cable over foul territory, but replay upheld the call.

The umpires had even warned both teams about this exact possibility before the game. Home-plate umpire Nick Mahrley explained that if a ball hit a cable over fair territory, whatever happened next would count. Padres manager Craig Stammen asked the obvious follow-up:

It can be caught?

Yep.

Brewers third-base coach Matt Erickson joked that he hadn’t seen it happen in six years, so naturally it happened that night. Baseball heard him.

Was It Even Going Out Anyway?

The harder question is whether the cable actually stole a homer. France had no doubt. Brewers catcher William Contreras thought it might’ve reached the glass beyond left field. Two Milwaukee coaches reportedly checked the team’s extra camera angles and came away believing the ball would’ve stayed fair. Megill’s first reaction off the bat was a little more scientific:

Oh, crap.

The data isn’t quite as sure.

France’s ball left the bat at a 49-degree launch angle. Only 10 over-the-fence homers in the entire Statcast era have been hit at 49 degrees or higher, and no homer at American Family Field has topped 46 degrees.

That doesn’t prove France was wrong. The cable got in the way, so we’ll never know where the ball would’ve landed. Spin, direction and the weird geometry of the left-field corner all matter. The numbers make “definitely gone” a tough sell. They don’t make “definitely caught” any more true.

That’s what makes this play so maddening. The roof didn’t just change the result. It erased the answer.

San Diego also had plenty of chances to keep a piece of architecture from deciding anything. The Padres went 1-for-9 with runners in scoring position and stranded 12. They forced Jacob Misiorowski to throw 88 pitches in four innings by fouling off 30 pitches and still managed only two runs. Manny Machado left the bases loaded in the second. Jackson Merrill did it in the fifth and again in the seventh. Fernando Tatis Jr. struck out with runners on the corners in the eighth.

The cable was the cruelest reason the Padres lost. It wasn’t the only one.

And, of course, Chourio was the one standing under the whole thing. His two-run homer tied the game in the third. Six innings later, his glove saved the lead after the stadium rerouted the biggest swing of the night straight toward him.

They MLB shouldn’t use projected distance to invent a home run that never technically happened. But they should come up with one standard rule for roof obstructions, because “let the building redirect the ball and play on” is chaos pretending to be fairness.

Maybe France won Game 1. Maybe he hit a very loud, very high foul ball. We’ll never know.

All stats courtesy of MLB.com.

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