The way you lay it out here is very possible IMO.<P>It was dark outside in the middle of the night, but I doubt the intruder would use a flashlight that might be seen by a neighbor or someone in a car driving past. <P>If you toss a baseball bat down in a yard, I don't think you'd anticipate it making noise. It must have been an unnerving surprise when it clattered on cement.<P>If the noise that Stanton claims to have heard through his open bedroom window WAS the baseball bat hitting and maybe bouncing on the cement ledge, it was a real fluke. No one else heard it.<P>And Stanton wouldn't have either, had he not been awakened by his wife about the noise <i>she</i> heard. And if the window had been closed, like all the other windows of nearby house apparently were. <P>(After all, it was 9 degrees outside!)