Hours before one of the strangest plays of Game 1 of the National League Division Series, Brewers third-base coach Rick Erickson basically called his shot.
During the usual pregame lineup-card exchange at home plate, Erickson and Padres manager Craig Stammen joined the umpiring crew to go over the ballpark’s ground rules at American Family Field. That discussion included a specific clarification from home-plate ump Nick Mahrley about what would happen if a ball struck the cables attached to the roof.
The FS1 broadcast later aired the exchange, and Erickson’s warning stood out.
“If it hits fair,” Mahrley says, “wherever it comes down, whatever happens, that’s what we’ve got.”
“It can be caught?” he said.
“Yes,” another of the umpires responded.
Then Erickson added the line that suddenly looked a lot less casual after the ninth inning unfolded:
“I haven’t seen that here in six years,” he said. “So it’ll happen tonight.”
A day later, Ty France’s controversial fly ball in the ninth inning of the Brewers’ eventual 3-2 victory struck a cable on the roof and was caught by Jackson Chourio for the second out. France’s swing had the look of a potential go-ahead two-run homer, and the play immediately raised the question of where the ball would have landed if it hadn’t hit the cable.
That part may be argued for a long time. The ruling itself was not.
“I've been out there quite a few times for lineup card exchanges, and there's some generalities of the ground rules,” Erickson said late Saturday night. “Very rarely is the roof talked about. And tonight, it was clearly explained -- almost identical to the play that happened.
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