ANAHEIM -- It didn’t strike Brewers center fielder Sal Frelick at the time, but what a way to punctuate the night the baseball world bid farewell to Willie Mays.
“It’s kind of cool doing it today,” Frelick said.
Only a few outfielders in the history of the sport patrolled center with the flare and finesse of Mays, who passed away on Tuesday before Frelick finished Major League Baseball’s slate of games with a leaping, game-saving catch to end the Brewers’ 6-3 win over the Angels at Angel Stadium.
A mistimed leap, or a bump of the wall, or just a few more inches on Taylor Ward’s booming fly ball, and it would have been a tying, three-run home run -- not to mention an absolute crusher for the Brewers, who held a 6-0 lead with one out in the bottom of the ninth before the Angels started cobbling together a rally.
Instead, the 5-foot-9 Frelick came back to Earth with the baseball in his glove, and the Brewers started celebrating.
The reaction from Brewers catcher Gary Sánchez and closer Trevor Megill -- who’d just been summoned to face Ward -- said it all. Megill was Milwaukee’s third reliever to appear in a half-inning that featured four hits, a walk, two wild pitches and, so far, only two outs. After the catch, Sánchez and Megill stood there with their hands atop their heads.
"Sal’s play goes down in the record books in Brewers history as one of the dramatic finishes to a game," manager Pat Murphy said.
What did Murphy think when the baseball left Ward’s bat?
“I was thinking, ‘tie score,’” Murphy said.
“You see him tracking it and lining it up and you know it’s going to be close,” said left fielder Christian Yelich, who’d started the night with his 200th career home run. “It’s huge for us. There’s no telling how that game ends. We’re probably still out there grinding.”
Said a dejected Ward: “I think it’s just baseball. I wasn’t entirely sure if I got it or not, but it was a hell of a play on his part.”
At first, Frelick downplayed the difficulty of the catch, saying he was positioned so perfectly in a “no doubles” defense, shaded slightly to the opposite field for the right-handed-hitting Ward, that it only took three steps back plus a well-timed jump.
“Really not that crazy of a play,” Frelick said. “I think it was just, right spot, right time.”
That’s an understatement.
“You practice so much and sometimes you don’t even get a ball in the outfield,” Frelick said. “How many times do you even have a chance to rob a home run?”
A conversation in center field on Tuesday afternoon foreshadowed the dramatic finish. Murphy found himself chatting with the Angels’ Mickey Moniak and Jo Adell, who were practicing home run robberies.
“I said, ‘Let me ask you guys something. Is it me, or have we had more robbed home runs this year than ever?’” Murphy said.
The players agreed.
So what’s the answer?
“Bigger, stronger, faster,” Murphy said, describing today’s hitters. “Everybody’s playing deeper. They’re closer to the wall and they understand they can do this. I think, in general, guys are playing deeper.”
It’s not the first time in recent memory for the Brewers. On May 29 against the Cubs, Blake Perkins was in center field for the Brewers, and he hit a home run and robbed a home run in the same Milwaukee victory.
And for Frelick, it was a flashback to another sensational catch on Sept. 10 of last season, when he made a leaping grab while simultaneously crashing into the wall and right fielder Joey Wiemer to keep a no-hit bid alive for the Brewers through 10 innings of an eventual loss to the Yankees at Yankee Stadium.
“If Sal’s near it,” Murphy said, “it goes in his glove 99.9 percent of the time.”