Let’s Go, Squirrel! Continued Adventures in Minor League Baseball
“This game has everything,” my step-son said.
That would be the Columbus Clippers vs. Buffalo Bisons game in Ohio’s capital city, on May 28. It was the second game of the day, double the baseball. It was Star Wars Day at the park, complete with Stormtroopers, X-Wing Pilots and more cosplay, coupled with appropriate insignia on the scoreboard (visiting Buffalo with First Order badness, home-town Columbus with New Republic goodness) and a John Williams-scored fireworks display.
There was a delayed double steal. And a 7-1-5-4 double play.
Even with all that, it was tough to top the fifth inning, when the “rally squirrel” showed up, creeping up around home base, players, then ground crew gave chase, in the infield, then along the third base line, left field, center field and finally right field. Midway through, an enterprising sound guy in the Clippers booth put on the PA “Yakety Sax,” aka the Benny Hill chase song.
The near-capacity crowd, chanted “Let’s go squirrel.” It was caught, with a plastic bucket no less, then escaped, leaping out of the bucket, then recaptured. The team later said it was led off the field and released into the wild. (Are squirrels really all that wild if they come right up to people, even professional ball players, and beg for nuts? But I digress.)
After the Great Squirrel Chase, the Clippers, who trailed most of the game, won on a walk-off single by Bobby Bradley. The saga made it onto ESPN.
One year ago, my first contribution to the brand new Recommend If You Like magazine was a short essay on the pleasures and weirdness of Minor League Baseball.
After a year of no MILB in 2020 (thanks, global pandemic), it was just nice to be back in the ball parks, resuming family trips to such locales as Harrisburg, Pa., Toledo, Ohio, Salisbury, Md., and the like.
But was I just glad to be back after a crappy previous year? Did the lure of cheap tickets and off-the-beaten spots and never-before-imagined anthropomorphic mascots (Mr. Celery is a favorite. He “CELE-brates” when the Wilmington Blue Rocks score a run.) hold up in the ensuing months, once the novelty wore off?
It all holds up.
We’re in strange and dangerous times: a divided country, still under threat from a pandemic, political violence, a nutty economy, war all over the place, supply chain problems, global warming, all-too-common mass shootings.
So it may be a small thing, to gather in one place like so many of us do at Minor League Baseball games, but it’s a significant one. People from all walks can hang out in a low pressure environment that’s both intimate and comfortably anonymous if you need it to be.
The baseball can be good at times, although not always. There will be squirrels for the ground crew to chase. There will be regional foods you haven’t heard of. (My favorite so far this year: The Churger, a chicken breast and cheeseburger combo on a bun, in Reading, Pa.)
It’s been nice resuming our annual summer MILB trips. As an organizing principle, it works for us. We see places we wouldn’t normally see. Local folks might be puzzled by our presence and desire to visit their part of the world, but they are always welcoming. Love of baseball, and squirrel chases, is a universal way to connect.
Also: Where else would I meet Erik Estrada, but on a Minor League Baseball trip? Because that’s where one meets cult actors: at John Glenn Columbus International Airport, as my family and I prepared to fly back to Washington.
“Visiting friends,” the CHiPs star, 73, replied when I asked what he was up to in Columbus. He was heading back to Los Angeles when we happened upon him at the low-key waiting areas around our respective gates. Next time, though, Ponch: go see a Columbus Clippers game, too.
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