Video: Ball Hawks Battle for Dom Brown's Wet Home Run Ball in McCovey Cove

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Cliff Lee was stupendous on Monday night in San Francisco, commanding the strike zone with pinpoint accuracy. His final line may show a couple of earned runs, but the homer he gave up to Hunter Pence should have been a strikeout for sure. The homeplate ump cleaaaarly missed a would-be third strike and Lee barely even flinched. He had a lead at the time. Still, it's amazing he doesn't get flustered. Whatever, I guess.

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The bats got to Giants lefty Madison Bumgarner early, forcing him into bases-loaded jams in both of the first two frames. The Phils came away empty handed in the first but capitalized in the second on a Michael Young double that should have cleared the bases had it not been for Chase Utley stumbling. Two-six would later score on a wild pitch and the Phils took an early 3-0 lead that would prove to be more than enough for Cliff Lee on the evening.

But it was a beast of a home run from Dom Brown that was most highlight-worthy. Brown crushed a Bumgarner offering in the fifth inning that cleared the right field stands and left the ball park entirely, ending up all wet in McCovey Cove. Now, I don't believe the ball actually landed directly in the water straight away, instead it looks like it took a hop off the paved walkway before the Cove, thus not counting as an official "splash hit."

One of my favorite parts was the battle for the ball once it landed in the Bay. If you watch the above video, you can clearly see one ball hawk throw a fishing-style apparatus that appears to be made for the sole purpose of retrieving a ball that is bobbing in the water. The intrepid collector is clearly no Bill Dance, however, and missed by mere inches, thus allowing superiorly-equiped kayak person to snag the ball for his own.

It's a game of inches, people. Or 394 feet, depending how you look at it.

The Phils won by the final of 6-2 if you were sleeping.

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