NEW YORK -- Before Wednesday's game in New York, Austin Hedges struck up a conversation with bullpen catcher Griffin Benedict.
"I've never had a home run robbed," Hedges casually told Benedict before the Padres' 6-4 loss to the Mets at Citi Field.
He still hasn't. But he came awfully close on Wednesday afternoon.
For a fleeting moment, Hedges believed he'd jinxed himself when Mets center fielder Brandon Nimmo leapt at the wall and came down with the baseball in his glove. Hedges stared in disbelief at Benedict in the Padres' bullpen, then he began to walk off the field.
As he did so, Hedges kept an eye on the center-field video board, which was showing a replay. The ball, it turned out, had ricocheted off the facing of the lower level and directly into Nimmo's glove. Within seconds, San Diego's catcher returned to the basepaths and resumed his home run trot as though nothing had happened.
"Only in baseball would that stuff happen," Hedges said. "… It was a whirlwind of emotions -- from rock bottom to, 'Nice.'"
"I just went up for it, and then I heard the ball hit the … metal piece right above the orange line," Nimmo said. "Sometimes even when we're practicing that, we'll hear that, simply because the ball will hit that through the basket of our web. All I knew was that I had the ball in my glove, so I was just like, 'Well, I'm going to play it like I caught it.' I know they have replay, so I know they'll check it. But all I knew was I jumped up and the ball ended up in my glove, so I was just going to go with that for as long as they would let me."
Sure enough, the Padres challenged the call, and replay confirmed the ball hit the wall above the center-field fence before it entered Nimmo's glove. Wednesday's ruling was infinitely more straightforward than Tuesday's controversial decision, in which Carlos Asuaje was ruled out for running into a tag after the presumed third out had already been recorded.

Hedges' homer gave the Padres a 2-0 lead. But the Mets turned that lead around with four runs in the bottom half of the frame.