THE YANKEES FINALLY FOUND A WAY TO LOSE A HOME RUN TO A FAN… AGAIN!

Anthony Volpe hit a ball that looked like a game-tying home run. Yankee Stadium went absolutely insane.

Then MLB told everybody to sit back down.

For a few glorious seconds Wednesday night, Yankee Stadium was completely alive. The Yankees were facing elimination, trailing the Tampa Bay Rays by two runs in the sixth inning, when Volpe stepped to the plate with George Lombard Jr. on first.

The Yankees desperately needed one big swing.

Volpe delivered.

He launched a ball toward left field, and Rays outfielder Victor Mesa Jr. started drifting back toward the wall. The ball kept carrying. Mesa kept running. Yankee Stadium started rumbling.

Then the ball disappeared into the stands.

Home run.

At least, that was what everybody thought.

Volpe rounded the bases. Lombard scored ahead of him. The Yankees appeared to have tied the game, and the Stadium erupted like October had finally decided to be kind to them.

Then Mesa immediately signaled that a fan had interfered with the play.

The umpires gathered. The replay appeared on the scoreboard. And there it was: a Yankees fan wearing a navy jacket had reached beyond the wall and touched the ball over the field of play.

Congratulations, buddy. You just went from “passionate Yankees fan” to “public enemy No. 1 in the Bronx” in about three seconds.

But the ruling was not as simple as erasing the home run.

The replay official determined that the ball would not have cleared the wall. The official also determined that Mesa would not have caught it. Lombard was allowed to score, and Volpe was awarded second base with an RBI double. Instead of a 4-4 tie, the Yankees still trailed 4-3. MLB.com

So the Yankees went from:

Two-run home run!

To:

One run and a double.

Baseball, ladies and gentlemen. The sport where sometimes you need a calculator, a lawyer and three replay angles just to determine what happened after somebody hit the ball.

The ruling somehow managed to make everybody angry.

Yankees fans were furious because they had already celebrated a game-tying home run. Mesa believed he might have gotten a glove on the ball. And the fan in the navy jacket was escorted from the Stadium after accidentally inserting himself into Yankees postseason history. ESPN

Here we go again...

Of course, Yankees fans have seen this movie before.

Almost exactly 30 years earlier, Jeffrey Maier reached over the right-field wall during Game 1 of the 1996 ALCS and deflected a fly ball hit by Derek Jeter. Orioles outfielder Tony Tarasco immediately protested that Maier had interfered with his chance to make the catch.

Only that time, replay review did not exist.

The home run stood. The Yankees tied the game, eventually won it and went on to win the World Series. Yankees fans celebrated. Orioles fans wanted to burn down the Stadium. Tarasco looked ready to file a lawsuit against the entire city of New York. MLB.com

This time, replay existed.

And replay walked into Yankee Stadium, grabbed the microphone and said:

“Everybody sit back down.”

The Yankees never scored again. Tampa Bay held on for a 4-3 victory, completed the three-game sweep and advanced to the American League Championship Series. The Yankees’ season was over. ABC News

Was the interference call technically correct?

Yes.

Was it hilarious?

Absolutely not if you are a Yankees fan.

Was it one of the strangest moments of the postseason?

Without question.

The fan probably believed he was making the greatest catch of his life. Instead, he became the newest character in the Yankees’ long-running “please keep your hands off the baseball” saga.

Jeffrey Maier became a hero in 1996.

Thirty years later, the Bronx got Navy Jacket Guy.

He did not catch a home run.

He caught a permanent place in Yankees playoff history.