​Milwaukee, WI – October 3: Ty France #25 of the San Diego Padres reacts after popping out where the ball hit the roof in the ninth inning against the Milwaukee Brewers during Game One of the National League Division Series at American Family Field on October 3, 2026 in Milwaukee, WI. (Photo by K.C. Alfred / The San Diego Union-Tribune via Getty Images) With one on and one out in the ninth inning of Saturday’s NLDS Game 1, the Padres trailing 3–2, Ty France lofted a deep fly ball to left that hit the roof at American Family Field — and dropped right into the glove of Brewers left fielder Jackson Chourio.Was it a home run? An out? Even the broadcast booth couldn’t agree on the ground rules, and things only got weirder from there.Oh. My. Goodness.This ball hit by France looked to potentially be a go-ahead home run, but it hit the roof and was caught, and was ruled an out. pic.twitter.com/E6pnoausP7— FOX Sports: MLB (@MLBONFOX) October 4, 2026The immediate reaction from FOX analysts and former big-leaguers AJ Pierzynski and Adam Wainwright, citing the pregame ground-rules meeting, was that a ball hitting the roof meant a home run. Meanwhile, play-by-play man Adam Amin was adamant that the umpires had it right in calling it an out.Despite three-ish minutes of absolute chaos and a massive spike in Google searches for “what happens when a ball hits the roof in baseball,” Amin did have it right. Per American Family Field’s ground rules, a ball that hits the roof over fair territory stays in play, so France’s fly ball was ruled a catch by Chourio for the second out. Now down to their last out, San Diego challenged whether the ball hit the roof over fair territory and lost.If Pierzynski and Wainwright didn’t know the ground rules, the average baseball fan probably didn’t either. Here are (brief) answers to all of the questions you may have had while watching last night’s game. This doesn’t happen often, right?Correct, although France’s fly ball was at least the third time in history that a ball has hit the roof in fair territory at American Family Field. It’s actually not the first time that it’s happened in the NLDS; in Game 4 of the 2008 NLDS, Phillies outfielder Jayson Werth hit a fly ball that struck a roof truss and was snagged on a diving catch by none other than Craig Counsell. The second time was in a regular season game in 2018; Reds infielder Scooter Gennett hit a fly ball that, again, came down in fair territory and was caught for an out by Eric Sogard. The third time was last night. Is this quirk unique to Milwaukee?Definitely not — almost a quarter of big-league stadiums (7 out of 30) have retractable roofs, and the Rays’ Tropicana Field has a fixed roof. There have been some way crazier examples than what happened in last night’s game. One of the most famous examples of balls hitting roofs occurred over fifty years ago, on June 10, 1974; Mike Schmidt crushed a towering fly ball that hit a public-address s