If you catch a baseball or softball, especially without a mitt, you know that you move your hand in the direction the ball is moving. You certainly don’t move it toward the moving ball. In stopping the ball its change in momentum is the same, no matter how you catch it. Thus the impulse your hand gives the ball is also the same. What changes? When you move your hand in the direction of the ball you increase the time the force of your hand acts on the ball. That means that the force is less.