[mitchbert]

It took me four watches of the replay to see it, but you are absolutely correct.

The ball hit the dirt mere inches from impacting the catcher's glove. Watch it frame by frame and the frame before impact shows the ball at a lower hieght than at the catch. That was my (and my friends) first clue.

The catcher's mistake was not routinely tagging the batter. Period.

[Al Simmons]

"The ball hit the dirt mere inches from impacting the catcher's glove. Watch it frame by frame and the frame before impact shows the ball at a lower hieght than at the catch. That was my (and my friends) first clue."

EXACTLY. If you zoom in on the glove, and then run the play back and forth without stopping, the angle of the ball BOUNCING UP into the mitt is clear as day......

[Lancey Howard]

The catcher's mistake was not routinely tagging the batter. Period.

Agreed. I would also be interested to know if that same catcher routinely rolls the ball toward the mound whenever an inning ends on a strikeout. I wonder if he nonchalantly rolled the ball toward the mound the way he did in order to say, "No, the ball didn't hit the ground", when in fact he knew it had.

[jdm]

"The ball hit the dirt mere inches from impacting the catcher's glove."

Where's the splash of dirt then? If the ball hit the ground at the (fast) speed it was going, there surely would have been some dust/dirt kicked up. No dust, no dirt. That ball did not hit the ground.