Nelson Cruz hit a broken-bat home run. It's not as rare as you'd think.

I didn’tt really know how it was possible, but Seattle Mariners slugger Nelson Cruz hit a home run on Monday night with a broken bat.

Pretty crazy, right? But it’s hardly the first time a hitter slugged a broken-bat dinger. There was Barry Bonds in 2002 …

… Mark Teixeira in 2009 …

… Chris Davis in 2013 …

… And Mike Napoli in 2015 during Spring Training.

You’re wondering how the heck that works, so here’s an answer from Alan M. Nathan at the University of Illinois, who analyzed some video of a Miguel Cabrera broken bat:

“The ball-bat contact time is short compared to the time it takes for the bending wave in the bat to develop and eventually fracture the bat. Assuming the Napoli situation is not substantially different from the Cabrera one, I conclude that by the time the bat has cracked, the ball is already on its merry way to the Green Monster.”

In other words, and I think I’ve got this right, the bat breaks after the ball leaves the bat.