I used to place them in softball.
Yeah, so did I (still do), but that's a bit of a different exercise. And even then, I can't imagine why one would try to do so with a popup. Regardless, it's not what was said. It's pretty clear to me that the sentence in question means "it just happened to drop where it did."
That's what that sentence means maybe you need to learn how to write better sentences.
The reading you've come about suggests you went in with the preconceived notion that the writer was an idiot. Otherwise it seems rather clear what was meant.