Words matter.

Donald Hall, the old Poet Laureate of the United States, knew that as well as anyone.

“To appreciate the word,” he once wrote, “writers and readers must first realize that no words can be exact synonyms. Some words are close to each other in meaning, close enough to reveal that they are not the same.”

It’s ironic, then, that one of the words in Hall’s classic collection of essays on sports (mostly baseball, as pointed out on its cover), Fathers Playing Catch with Sons, is wrong. And half of America—at least—is wrong in the way they talk about perhaps one of the simplest and most special experiences we can share with the people in our lives.

In this episode, we explore the most divisive of all sports debates: “Have a Catch” vs. “Play Catch.” After considering every influence from Shakespeare to Snoopy, with a fun stop at a world record attempt in New Jersey, we hope you’ll see that while they are close to each other in meaning, they are not the same. And only one of them truly captures why The Catch means so much to us.

Sixty-four hundred people were in the building and saw it for themselves. None of them could believe their eyes, but they saw it.

Countless others watched the highlights on SportsCenter or stopped their scrolling long enough to read gobsmacked posts about what had happened.

Oh, it happened. Even if the record books—some of the record books, anyway—will have you believe that it didn’t. At least not the way you may have heard about it.

What happened that late December night wasn’t just the most significant outcome of any game in the 19-year history of the club hockey program at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas—and that includes the national championship they’d go on to win a few months later. It may have been the greatest upset in the history of college sports.

Join us for a new season of Out of Left Field . . . coming soon!