Brewers Catcher Tears the Cover off the Ball!

There's an old saying in baseball that a player hit the ball so hard he tore the cover off of it. You very rarely ever see it happen — except maybe in home run celebration cartoons. But on Friday, in a game between the Brewers and the Pirates, the cover was actually ripped off the ball!

It happened in the sixth inning. Milwaukee's backup catcher Martín Maldonado was a the plate and hit a pretty routine ground ball to third. Except that as the ball bounced to third baseman Pedro Alvarez, it had a portion of its covering trailing behind it:




What a weird play, especially because the hit wasn't very hard. Ballplayers see a lot, but it's clear from the video that this was something these guys haven't encountered very often.

"I said to [Pirates manager Clint] Hurdle, 'You see something new every day, huh?,'" Brewers pitcher Kyle Lohse said. "He kind of chuckled."

Hurdle was asked if he'd ever seen anything like the cover being torn off. His response? "Never. Never. Ever."

After the game, the Brewers tweeted out a close-up shot of the ball. It's pretty wild:

Photo: Justin K. Aller/Getty Images