CLEVELAND, Ohio -- It was not a bird. It was not a plane.
It was superhuman.
Sandy Alomar Jr. peered through the outfield fence from his crouched stance in the bullpen, where he was warming up Eric Plunk. For a moment, he spotted Kenny Lofton, who was making a beeline for the wall. Lofton disappeared from Alomar's view. Then, the catcher "heard a boom," so he looked up.
There was Lofton.
"I said, 'Holy [crap]!'" Alomar said. "No way that just happened. That's impressive."
Lofton soared through the air on Aug. 4, 1996, a sunny Sunday afternoon at Jacobs Field.