JUST A LITTLE BIT OUTSIDE.

The Milwaukee Brewers hosted the first two divisional round playoff games Saturday and Sunday.  Milwaukee's Oktoberfest was also in progress, with the Hoan Bridge illuminated in Brewer colors.

A fireworks display launched from the breakwater went into its Grand Finale at almost exactly the moment that Brewer catcher William Contreras hit a go-ahead home run.  Nobody at the stadium saw it, though, as the roof and side panels were closed.  Something about not making adjustments to the playing conditions during a playoff game.

Then came the ninth inning, and that roof might have figured in the outcome.

It’s not every night you have to consult the official American Family Field ground rules to make a critical decision in a Milwaukee Brewers postseason baseball game.

Per the rules: “Batted ball striking roof, roof truss or roof cable over fair territory: In Play. If caught by fielder, batter is out and runners advance at own risk.”

A bizarre moment in the top of the ninth inning of the Brewers’ 3-2 victory over the San Diego Padres necessitated a consultation with the ballpark rules. First baseman Ty France had lifted a pop fly off of closer Trevor Megill so high into the American Family Field rafters in left that it clanked off a roof truss before landing squarely in Jackson Chourio’s waiting glove.

The Padre’s challenged the out, but the call was upheld after the replay official couldn’t determine definitively that the ball struck the roof in foul territory, which would have made it a dead ball situation.

Mr Megill's initial reaction was that he had surrendered a two-run home run, although the guys with the blueprints and slide rules are arguing, strongly, that anything going that far up off the bat is at best going to be a popup to the outfield.  Who knows, that might be a physics or calculus problem at Marquette, the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, and the Milwaukee School of Engineering.

[Padre manager Craig] Stammen suggested plugging the exit velocity and launch angle into AI to determine whether the ball would have dingered or not. The math – no robots needed – suggests it wouldn’t have. No balls at France’s 49-degree launch angle and 105.3 mph exit velocity have ever gone for a home run since Statcast began in 2015. The expected batting average on it was .050.

In the pre-game conference involving ground rules (e.g. how high on the Green Monster must a flyball hit to be a home run? what's the signal for a ball stuck in the poison ivy?) the roof hardware came up.

Ground rules at the park state that a ball that strikes the cables in fair territory is fair and a live ball, which – again, somehow, someway – came up at the pregame umpire’s meeting at home plate.

“We joked about it at the umpire meeting today about what would happen if the ball hit the roof. And it was unlikely, but it happened,” Stammen said.

The Padres challenged the call that the ball hit in fair territory, which was never going to be overturned simply based on the impossibility of determining the angle from replay.

There's got to be a sponsorship opportunity here, maybe the Overhead Door Company motion sensor?

Sunday's game had a more conventional resolution: last of the ninth, bases are loaded, two are out, Brewers trail by a run.  Jackson Chourio's liner up the middle is hard-hit enough to tick off a diving infielder's glove, thereby slowed up enough that the charging center-fielder could not throw out the runner attempting to score from second.