It sure looked dicey off the bat, didn’t it? It sure looked like Ceddanne Rafaela had caught David Bednar’s 97 mph fastball square, sending the ball straight to the Yankee Stadium twilight zone, toward the short porch in right, the built-in optical illusion that makes it seem like every reasonably hit fly ball has a shot to find hands.
And this … this felt like it had a shot.
But Aaron Judge sprinted straight for the warning track and then he halted four steps onto the warning track. This is when 47,993 witnesses began to breathe again. A few seconds later the ball was in Judge’s glove, and the normally mild-mannered right fielder — Clark Kent until he chooses to don his cape — delivered an uppercut with his right fist.
“Yeeeeeaaaaaahhhh!” he exclaimed, and you could almost hear it over the thunder of joy spilling out of the Stadium.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
