Minor league baseball is known for their whacky, fan-friendly promotions and gimmicks. Tickets are a fraction of the price of MLB tickets and every seat is practically field level. Beer is also cheap as hell, so by the time the crazy hotdog vendor starts chucking shit into the crowd in the seventh, you’re three deep and entertained.
Minor league clubs are also notorious for funny promotions, but the absolute best concept I’ve seen at an MILB game is the bat dog. The Trenton Thunder have this (or at least they did when I was there) and it was a wholesome crowd-pleaser. The dog runs out, grabs the bat and brings it back. Perfect concept because America loves dogs, myself included.
In all honesty, it seems like the general public prefers dogs to humans these days. Any given white girl’s Twitter feed is gonna be 75% dog related content and everybody knows that dog movie deaths are infinitely sadder than human ones. America is ready to ride out for dogs at any time, so it makes what this douche-bag umpire did even more egregious.
The Las Vegas Aviators (formerly Mets, now A’s affiliate) employ the bat dog concept and from what I’ve read, they do it best. Finn the bat dog is their boy over there and he apparently is known as the best bat dog around. Finn is a fan favorite and Vegas fans (who need a Major League team) wanna see him in action.
All that background makes what this umpire did even more egregious.
What a dick! How can you possibly yank the bat away from the bat dog like that? Those two seconds it takes for the dog to grab the bat aren’t gonna make a huge difference in the speed of the game but “old school” here wasn’t having it. You already know this dude is the same type of “baseball guy” type thatripped Odubel. You know, the dickhead who will say something like “baseball doesn’t need ana-ma-lytics”, fully knowing that he pronounced it wrong.
Thankfully, the crowd let him have it.
This incident follows a growing trend of umpires having this bizarre fantasy that they’re what the fans come for. In reality, nobody gives an absolute fuck about umpires and typically only see them as an annoyance. I mean, those little league umpires with bizarre strike calls were always hilarious when I was a kid, but umps are irrelevant other than that. Still, these guys continue to make absolute asses of themselves.
Gotta hand it to Finn the bat dog’s trainer (who I assume runs the account) frying this guy up on Twitter though. Thanks to him, the world now knows how much of a dick this ump is and we have yet another happening to throw into the “minor league baseball oddity” folder.
But listen, nothing will ever top the army-crawling manager. That much is sacred