It was a catch that should earn both men a place in the New York Yankees.

Showing exemplary teamwork, two friends caught a toddler who had fallen 40ft from the third floor of a block of flats in the Bronx section of New York. “He knocked me right out of my shoes,” said Pedro Nevarez, 40, who took the brunt of the impact.

Timothy Addo, 3, had crawled out on to the fire escape at his home on Daly Avenue about noon on Thursday when his babysitter opened the window to smoke a cigarette and then stepped away to go to the lavatory.

Earlier in the day, the boy had told his mother: “This morning I want to be Superman . . . I wanna be Spider-Man.”

Mr Nevarez and his childhood friend Julio Gonzalez, 43, were looking at a second-hand Honda car that one was thinking of selling to the other when they heard screaming and saw Timothy clinging for his life to the iron fire escape.

At first, Mr Nevarez tried to run into the building to pull the child back in, but the door was locked. He then tried to grab the bottom rung of the fire escape to clamber up to rescue him, but could not reach.

They were running out of time, so the two took their places with outstretched arms. “Catch him, catch him, that was what we had to do,” Mr Gonzalez said.

“Just catch the baby — make sure he did not hit the floor because if he hit the floor he is going to die.”

Just as they got in position, the 43lb (19.5kg) toddler tumbled towards them, crashing through the branches of a tree. The child dropped feet first on to Mr Nevarez’s chest, knocking him to the ground. He was unable to hold on to Timothy, but said that Mr Gonzalez scooped him up in time.

“I put my hands out ready,” Mr Gonzalez said. “My ‘brother’ did the same thing. The baby hit the branch. He bounced off my brother and fell into my lap. He knocked my brother down and he knocked me down. But we caught him. He did not ever hit the floor.”

Timothy was treated in hospital for minor cuts and released with a bandage on his head. His family hailed him as a “miracle baby” because he was born three months premature, weighing just 1½ pounds.

Katrina Cosme, 26, the boy’s mother, returned home from work a couple of hours later and hugged Mr Gonzalez for saving her child. “He’s fine. He’s happy. He’s smiling,” she said of Timothy.

Mr Nevarez, who has one foster son, said: “I’m not a hero. I did what any other father would do. When you’re a father, you would do this whether it’s your child or not.” Mr Gonzalez, who has six children, said: “I feel that I did something good.”

Police took the babysitter, Carol Baldwin, 49, to the station for questioning, but had yet to decide whether to file any charges against her.

Challenging the impression that New Yorkers are uncaring neighbours, Ray Kelly, the police commissioner, proclaimed: “This is a week of heroes here in New York.”

Two days earlier, a building worker leapt on to the tracks at a Harlem subway station to save a man who had fallen in front of an underground train after suffering a seizure.

Leaving his young daughters on the platform, Wesley Autrey, 50, dived on top of Cameron Hollopeter, 20, and pushed him into the crawl-space between the tracks as the oncoming No 1 train rolled safely over them.

Mr Autrey has been showered with praise as the “Hero of Harlem” and the “Subway Superman”. Michael Bloomberg, the Mayor, awarded him the Bronze Medal, the city’s highest civic honour — a tribute Mr Nevarez and Mr Gonzalez can also expect.

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