On July 1, Rangers centerfielder Gary Matthews Jr. made what some call the greatest catch in baseball history. While in a full sprint, Matthews climbed the wall at Ameriquest Field in Arlington, Texas, and made an over-the-head catch to rob Houston's Mike Lamb of a home run. "It's going to go on the highlights for a while, and it should," Lamb said. "It just stinks that it happened to me."

Astros manager Phil Garner said, "I didn't think he had a chance at it. I thought he was just jumping for the heck of it. Next thing you knew, he pulled it in. A fantastic play.''

With the Rangers in town to play the Devil Rays last week, Matthews told Tom Jones of tbt* what it feels like to rob a homer and what went into the catch.

Robbing homers: To me, it might be the most exciting play in baseball. It's like hitting a triple. The whole crowd rises and builds and builds, and they're just waiting to see what happens. It's hard to practice. The best you can do is go out during batting practice and just try to get the timing of it down.

Bat contact: Most of the time you can tell right off the bat if you have a chance. The ones you have a chance to catch are really high, and you know you have time to run back to the wall. Line drives, you just can't get to it. But if it's high, you can either jump for it, or if it's a tall wall, you might have to climb it. That's tough.

Wall climbing: Jumping is easy. Climbing is another story. Now timing is involved. You have to time it just right so that when you're at your very highest, the ball is coming down at its lowest point before it goes over the wall. The main thing when you're climbing the wall is your foot has to stick into the wall. You just run and push your foot into the wall. If it doesn't stick ... you have no chance.

The catch: On the catch against Mike Lamb, as soon as he hit it, I immediately thought I had a chance, but I knew I had to move fast. I almost got to the wall too late. I was playing sort of shallow. He hit a homer earlier in the game, so I played a hair deeper on that at-bat. That might have been the difference. He hit it, and I had a good jump. I had to sprint right at the wall, and, really, everything had to be just perfect. I had to climb it, and I was lucky that my (right) foot stuck in the wall. As soon as I got up, I looked up, and the ball was coming over my head. I was a little off, so I had to reach back over my left shoulder. But I saw it the whole way. I just didn't throw my glove out. It just lined up perfectly. It hit right in the pocket. The key was I ... never lost track of it from the moment it hit the bat.

The aftermath: I thought it was a heck of a catch, but you don't realize how difficult it is until you see the replay. Then I realized I caught it on a dead sprint. Yeah, I guess it was pretty good.