When you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go.
Baseball is a sport for families, friends, and fun. Nothing is better than enjoying some peanuts, a hot dog, and a cold beer while watching your favorite team at the plate. The only thing that would make an outing the ballpark even better is the addition of a four-legged friend.
While some ballparks bark at the park events where attendees can bring their dogs to a game, a Florida minor league team has a dog at every game. The dream, right? The Clearwater Threshers, an affiliate of the Phillies, have an adorable lab that attends each game and serves as the team’s bat dog. The yellow lab’s duties are to run on the field and retrieve the bat once the player has dropped it to run the bases.
Earlier this summer, the team’s bat dog of six years, Layla, retired at the age of 13.
Since Layla retired, it was time to pass the honor down to a new bat dog, and the Threshers were proud to announce that a 10-month-old lab named Lucy May would be taking over bat dog duties. After a lot of training, she was ready to hit the field. But her debut on the diamond did not go as planned. When Lucy May was tagged to fetch her first bat, the nerves from the crowd took over, and well…sh*t happens. Literally.
After running through the other team’s dugout, chasing the grounds crew, and not picking up her bat, all of that activity worked up a girl’s stomach, and she had to let it out. So Lucy May popped a squat right in the middle of the grass to relieve herself.
Maybe a little more training is needed before the next appearance. But hey, at least the crowd got a kick out of it, leading to many laughs and applause. Because, let’s face it, we’ve all been there. After the incident, the team took to social media to make a lighthearted video with Lucy May’s trainer, showing everyone she does know how to do her job and is, in fact, a certified good girl.
After the first game jitters, I bet she will be the star of the show moving forward. Well…she was the star of that game as well.
