Video

A Phillies Minor Leaguer Made One Of The Most Spectacular Catches You’ll See… Kind Of

We watched the clip you’ll see below – and every angle it presents of the catch in question (or whatever it actually is) by Phillies minor leaguer Jiwan James – several times. We read the comments below the video on Youtube, which advanced several different theories of what happened. We’ll save those for after the video so you can watch it free of bias the first time around, but suffice to say, if this actually was a legitimate catch by James, it might be one of the most remarkable, acrobatic catches at any level in baseball history:

So. Among the theories advanced by those who watched the video: 1) the ball bounced off the top of the wall, which let it hang long enough for James to make the play (though that technically isn’t a catch at that point); 2) the ball went behind his glove, then got trapped against the wall by James’ body before he fell to the ground and the ball fell into his hand (again, not a catch); and 3) the ball actually went over the wall and James sneakily pulled an extra ball out of his pocket. (Hey, extreme scenarios call for extreme explanations.)

You’ll notice that – assume scenario #3 isn’t what happened – while what James did was a spectacular feat of athleticism, it wasn’t technically a catch. And in reviewing the play this morning, SportsCenter appeared to confirm that it indeed wasn’t. What actually happened: the second scenario posed above. Their video appeared to show the ball barely eluding James’ glove, but staying in the park. If you can watch the above video and actually see the ball fall inside the wall, you’ve got yourself some great eyesight. SportsCenter had to do some highlighting to make the ball visible – we’ll post video of that if and when we can.

It’s a shame the catch shouldn’t have actually counted, because even though it wasn’t a catch in the technical sense, it was about as good a play as we’ve seen all year. To (apparently) corral that ball before it hit the ground, while forcefully hitting the ground yourself took both insane athleticism and concentration, and in real time, it damn near looked like magic. If there were ever a time that a blown call was really, really hard to complain about, this was it.

[Bob's Blitz]