It’s a bad week to be a bird near a baseball field…
Just back on May 17th, an Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher struck and killed a bird in mid-air with a curveball.
Up until that point, only two players (both from the Diamondbacks) had killed a bird with a baseball during on field action.
But then outfielder for the Cleveland Guardians Will Brennan entered the chat…
During a game earlier today, the Chicago White Sox and the Guardians were facing off in the bottom of the 2nd inning, and Brennan went “oppo-taco” on a line drive single against pitcher Jesse Sholtens.
The ball had tremendous power behind it as it came off the bat, but seemed to slow down just as it was entering the outfield.
Players in the infield began to strangely look around and point, and then upon further review, it was discovered that a bird had unfortunately been hit with the hard hit baseball.
Wrong place, wrong time.
One of the announcers saw it as soon as it happened, and stated:
“Get a shot right at shortstop guys, we’ve got a bird that may have been hit by that possibly, because the bird is not moving.”
The video then circled around to the players around the bases, who were all sporting a mixture of smiles and grimaces, evidently confirming that the announcer’s hunch that a bird took the brute force of well hit baseball was correct.
The commentator continues:
“Well, here comes the shovel.”
Someone from the maintenance crew quickly worked to remove the body (or what was left of it) of the dead bird, while the announcers had to pretend about being interested in some random statistics rather than the bird being hit.
The angle of the video isn’t all that great, but if you watch closely, you’ll be able to see the bird get pummeled just as it is about to exit the infield dirt.
Jared Carrabis, the “tribal chief of baseball,” sent out the video with the hilarious (and somewhat true) caption:
“How many birds have to die before they ban the game of baseball? Enough is enough.”
Here’s another angle that shows the impact a bit better:
And if you wanted to see the other two times something like this has been documented, I’ve got you covered:
And the legendary Randy Johnson heater:
