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Sports

Turner Field Vendor Casually Makes Bare-Handed Catch on Yoenis Cespedes Grand Slam

A 50/50 raffle vendor at the Braves game made a bare-handed catch on a home run ball look easy.

Yoensis Cespedes should have played the lottery Sunday, or at least gotten a few tickets for Turner Field's 50/50 ballpark raffle. Cespedes lined a grand slam in the third inning for his 30th home run of the season that also helped the Mets extend to a big lead in a blowout victory against the Braves.

Cespedes' liner easily cleared the left-field fence and was caught, about ten rows back, by a 50/50 raffle vendor using his bare right hand—while he held onto a sign with the other hand. Pret-ty impressive, especially because Turner Field is a hard park in which to homer, period. You just don't get a chance to practice your bare-handed, sign-holding home-run grabs as a vendor very often.

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"Oh, nice catch!" you can hear Mets' TV analyst Keith Hernandez say. Hernandez being impressed is itself impressive, given his status as an 11-time Gold Glove winner and 1979 NL co-MVP with Dave Parker.

"I'll cut him some slack," Hernandez added. "One-handed All-Star."

Noting that it was a "50/50 raffle guy" who made the play "look easy," broadcaster Gary Cohen interjects: "Does he get to keep 50 percent of the ball?" He could claim it, this being America, but as a ballpark employee, he did the right thing and handed the souvenir to a kid in a red Brian McCann patriotic No. 16 shirsey.

Note how the man glows gold with the spirit of America as he shares the ball with a youngster—a ball hit by Cespedes, a Cuban defector who fled the tyranny of totalitarian government for the liberty of Old Glory's bosom.

Maybe the symbolism is lost on the kid, but least he's happy. Also happy? The Mets, who would be in the playoffs as a wild card if the season ended today and not on October 2nd.