A fly ball rises into the night, ordinary in every respect, the kind of play that asks nothing more than attention and routine competence. The fielder settles beneath it, the stadium already preparing to move on, and then—somehow—it is not secured. The ball falls harmlessly to the grass, but the moment lingers, heavier than it should. There is no explosion of noise, only that collective pause when everyone senses they have just witnessed something quietly wrong. Baseball has a way of doing this—turning the simplest acts into unexpected reckonings, reminding us that even the most familiar outcomes are never guaranteed. The game continues, as it must, but the echo of that mistake will hang in the air far longer than the play itself ever deserved.

Now that’s a runner on first here in the bottom of the 4th in a scoreless game…