Beekeeper Matt Hilton removes a swarm of bees gathered on the net behind home plate, delaying the start of Tuesday night’s game between the Dodgers and Diamondbacks in Phoenix. Matt York/Associated Press
The Arizona Diamondbacks already have had a game rained out this season, which is quite the accomplishment for a team that’s located in a desert and plays in a stadium with a retractable roof. And while things were dry for the start of Tuesday night’s home game against the Los Angeles Dodgers – the roof was open at Chase Field – there was one holdup, or rather thousands of very small, stinging holdups.
You see, a colony of bees had taken up residence atop the protective netting behind home plate, and they weren’t about to leave because a baseball game needed to be played.
A swarm of bees gathers on the netting behind home plate at Chase Field in Phoenix on Tuesday night. Matt York/Associated Press
Faced with the prospect of the first known bee cancellation in Major League Baseball history, the team placed a call to Matt Hilton, branch manager for Blue Sky Pest Control’s Phoenix office. Hilton left his son’s T-ball game and made the 45-minute drive to Chase Field, where he mounted a retractable lift, sprayed the bees to calm them down and vacuumed them right up.
Hilton wasn’t done. After he saved the day, the Diamondbacks invited him to throw out the first pitch of a game that had now been delayed by nearly two hours. Hilton, still wearing his beekeeping get-up, did not disappoint.
“I thought I was just going to do my thing and cruise out, but it was fun because of the thousands of people cheering for you,” Hilton told the Associated Press. “It was a little nerve-racking, I’m not going to lie – a lot of pressure to get this game going.”
There have been a number of bee-related delays at MLB stadiums and beyond in recent years, including one at Chase Field in 2014. Last year, a bee swarm near the bullpens led to a delay at a Rockies-Orioles game in Baltimore. Games also have been halted in 2019 and 2013.
In March, a tennis match between Carlos Alcaraz and Alexander Zverev in Indian Wells, California, was delayed by nearly two hours after a swarm of bees decided to take up residence upon a camera above the court (the bee vacuum guy also received hearty cheers in that one).
Numbers released this year by the Census of Agriculture showed that America’s honeybee population has rocketed to an all-time high, or at least the honeybee population that is used for commercial honey production (the number of feral bees likely also is quite high after years of environmental worry about the state of the bee). That should keep Hilton and his fellow bee-wranglers in business.
“Minor leagues to the big leagues now,” Hilton said. “It’s pretty cool.”
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