The further down the minor league baseball totem pole you go, the more likely you are to see a delay caused by something incredibly weird. Thursday night in the New York-Penn League, there was a delay that probably wouldn’t be found almost anywhere else.
In the game between the Batavia Muckdogs (affiliated with the Miami Marlins) and State College Spikes (affiliated with the St. Louis Cardinals), the start was delayed because, you guessed it, a sheep wandered onto the field. Why might that have happened? The Spikes booked your traditional cowboy monkey show for between innings and the monkey’s entourage happened to include a couple of sheep, one of which didn’t want to wait until the inning was over to put on a show.
Somehow, this is not the first sheep delay in the history of the sport, although this is the first sheep delay for 136 years. According to a 1972 baseball research journal, a minor league game in Waterbury, Connecticut in the 1880s was delayed because Waterbury’s sheep mascot and two loose dogs knocked over umpire John L. Sullivan (also the heavyweight champion).
So last night, we saw something in baseball that hadn’t happened in almost 130 years. #CantPredictBall
