"Curtis Granderson's first reaction was to freeze, dead in his tracks, alone on a grand baseball stage with a baseball scraping a clear white path against the black night sky.

Heading right at him.

"You never know with a ball like that," he would say later. "It can land in front of you. Or it can get some air under it, and go over your head."

This one was going over his head. Granderson knew it. A.J. Burnett — the man who had walked the bases loaded, whose work night (if not his continued employment as a Yankee) depended on where the ball landed — knew it. Don Kelly, who had hit the ball? He knew it, right up to the point when Granderson extended his arm, extended his glove, and plucked the ball out of the sky like he was grabbing an apple off a tree."