There's an old expression about "knocking the cover off the ball." Maybe it happened back in the dead ball era, but, well, we've never really seen it happen.

That is, we'd never seen it happen before Friday, when Brewers catcher Martin Maldonado -- yes, he of the .222 career batting average and 12 career homers -- did it.

You'd think it would happen on a towering homer, but, nope, it happened on a grounder to third:

There are 108 stitches on a ball. Alert Rawlings: for Brewers catcher Martin Maldonado, they need to start using, like, 125 stitches.

Anyway, Maldonado gets a hit out of this, since that's not an error on the third baseman for the ball coming apart. And he gets the claim to fame of being THE STRONGEST PERSON EVER TO PLAY BASEBALL.