On Monday night in Los Angeles, Mets third baseman Todd Frazier made what looked like a spectacular catch on a foul ball that sent him tumbling into the crowd at Dodger Stadium. Except video of the catch appeared to show a second ball becoming involved, which Frazier quickly threw back into the crowd.
On Wednesday, Frazier admitted to SportsNet New York that he duped the umpire. “It is Hollywood, so sometimes you have to act out a little bit,” Frazier said before the Mets played their series finale against the Dodgers. “Basically I caught the ball going in the stands and as I came down the ball came out. After seeing the replay there was another ball there and the first ball I saw I picked up and raised my hand up and [Wegner] called him out. It was just one of those things where I thought real quick, I had a split-second, and if there wasn’t a ball there I didn’t have a shot to get him out.”
Not even Frazier knew it was a rubber ball until he reached into his glove to grab it. That's when he decided to just play along and ditch the evidence by tossing it back. It worked.
“At the end of the day I had another decision to make, whether to give Jacob [deGrom] the ball or throw it in the stands and that was the only thing I could think of,” said Frazier, who tossed the ball to the crowd.
The fact this happened so close to Tinseltown probably means a movie option of some sort that never actually turns into a movie. It's baseball after all.
