Vladdy swung so hard that his bat got stuck in netting ... for 2 innings

MILWAUKEE -- Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s bat took over Toronto's 3-1 loss to the Brewers on Monday, but not how you’d think.

In the fourth inning, Vladdy’s bat flew out of his hands and whizzed over the Blue Jays’ dugout into the netting above as players ducked and scrambled. But it didn’t come down.

Instead, the bat hung there, some 20 feet above the dugout, the surprise subplot of the game.

"I was really wondering what was going on there," said Brewers starter Colin Rea. "I think I threw a first-pitch strike and all of a sudden there's this large cheer. I was like, 'What's going on?' That was funny."

Early rescue efforts were rudimentary. Players reached up above the dugout to shake the netting, nervously looking up to make sure that Vladdy’s lumber wasn’t tumbling down on their heads. A couple of balls were thrown up, hoping to knock it loose, but this thing was stuck.

So they simply resumed the game with the bat still there.

Even when Christian Yelich slashed a foul ball into that same netting in the bottom of the fourth, it didn’t budge.

If the Blue Jays had started to pile on runs, perhaps this bat would have stayed, dangling above the dugout as their new good luck charm. Milwaukee scored in the bottom half, though, and the Blue Jays struggled to scrape a hit together, so the bat had to come down. This is when the Blue Jays got their engineers involved.

First, Mustafa “Moose” Hassan, their manager of clubhouse operations, brought out a long, extended handle. They could make contact, but couldn’t wrangle it. A loop was added to the end of the stick to wrap around the bat, and with Chris Bassitt taking over the extraction effort, they finally grabbed on. Bassitt is an outdoorsman, capable of crafting something out of nothing, and finally freed the bat.

The stick itself briefly became caught in the netting itself before it too was yanked free and the Blue Jays were able to retrieve the fallen bat from the top of the dugout. As Guerrero sat back in the dugout with his bat, which had hung over this game for two innings, he held it close and gave the bat a quick kiss, reunited at last.