Phoenix Sports Today

Phoenix Sports News Continuously Updated

2023 SnakePit Awards, Game of the Year: April 30, Bee-movie with a happy ending vs. Los Angeles

by


And no Nicolas Cage in sight.

This one proved close. Very close. So close, in fact, that I ended up having to use my vote as a tiebreaker, because both this and the comeback against Washington received the same number of votes. After careful consideration, I decided to go for the bee game, for a few reasons. Firstly, the sheer uniqueness of the event means it will stick in the mind as an entity. To be honest (and I hope you appreciate my restraint in declining the pun opportunity there), I don’t remember much in detail about the comeback game. Even if a swarm of insects is the thing you will remember about this one… the point is, you WILL remember it! It was also against the Dodgers, and that’s always a point in any win’s favor.

Up until not long before first pitch, there were no signs of anything unusual. But about five minutes before the game was scheduled to start, it became clear there was a problem. The team’s VP of baseball operations, Mike Rock, got a call from the senior manager of events. He said, “She doesn’t usually call me about that time. I knew something was odd. She said we have bees landing on the net right behind home plate. I said, ‘How many?’ And she said, ‘Hundreds — no way, thousands.’ And I knew we had a problem.” The two managers met with the umpires and decided the game could not start: sensible, as the swarm’s position meant the first foul-ball could have turned this into the finale of The Wicker Man.

It’s far from the first bee-related incident affecting baseball in Arizona. Since 2017, I’ve been able to find at least six separate reports of spring training games here being interrupted by swarms, most recently a backfield game at the Rangers complex in Surprise during the 2019 pre-season. The D-backs had a game interrupted in 2012 against the Giants in Scottsdale, and another two years later against the Brewers. And back in 2005, a Diamondbacks contest down in Tucson had to be called off entirely after five innings, bees chasing Rockies’ pitcher Darren Oliver off the mound. They were allegedly attracted by his coconut hair product.

Anyway, back at Chase, this situation called for a professional, though I regret the PA announcer did not get to ask, “Is there an apiarist in the stadium?” Instead, the team went to Matt Hilton, manage at Blue Sky Pest Control’s Phoenix office. He was, appropriately, at his son’s T-ball game when he got the call, and headed for Chase as fast as he could, arriving about 70 minutes after first pitch, riding in on a cart from right field, to the cheers of the crowd. He sent the swarm to sleep and vacuumed them up, as the PA played Holding Out for a Hero. As a reward, he got to throw out the first pitch, and was subsequently honored with his own Topps baseball card.

The delay, of more than two hours, meant scheduled starting pitcher Jordan Montgomery had to be scratched because he had already warmed up before the game was iced. [He’d had a 2.77 ERA in his first two starts, but then an 8.37 ERA over his seven post-swarm outings. I’m not saying it WAS the bees, but… Yeah, it was the bees] Instead, it became a bullpen game for Arizona, with Brandon Hughes making his first start as a professional. Bryce Jarvis worked three scoreless in relief, but Justin Martinez walked two and allowed a hit to the four batters he faced, before being replaced by Joe Mantiply. Joe then uncorked a wild pitch, and a run-scoring balk in the following inning.

But all told, and considering the circumstances, the bullpen holding the Dodgers to two runs in regulation was solid enough. That countered an early strike from Christian Walker, who had homered leading off the fourth, to give Arizona a 1-0 lead. Arizona was then able to tie things up in the eighth, after a Joc Pederson double with one out. He came around to score on a single by Gabriel Moreno. That was how things stood after nine innings, so of course, after the start of the game was held up until almost nine p.m, naturally it went into extras! Scott McGough got the ball and loaded the bases with one out, but got out of it with just the Manfred man scoring, giving LA a 3-2 lead.

That lasted just three pitches, because Walker swatted his second home-run of the night, going deep off former Diamondback Nabil Crismatt, to score both the ghost runner and himself, giving Arizona their second walk-off win of the year. He discusses the game below, including how he worked around the delay and his approach at the plate. Afterward, Torey Lovullo said he was proud of how the team fought all night: “You scratch your starter because of something you could never, ever predict – the bullpen goes out and keeps you within striking distance the entire night… We keep fighting, and when you keep fighting the way we do, good things happen.”

It was the first win of the season for the Diamondbacks against the Dodgers, and while it wouldn’t be the biggest, it was certainly the most dramatic. There have been other walk-off victories against them at Chase, though this is the only one since the end of 2022. But I doubt there have been any which took place in such unusual circumstances. Our starting pitcher was forced out of the game before throwing a single pitch, but the team somehow found a way to survive, with Christian Walker delivering a pair of the season’s most timely home-runs. It was a fitting way to finish a game which began with an event unprecedented in Chase Field history, and perhaps in major-league history as well.

Previous winners