PHOENIX — When Matt Hilton was sitting at his 6-year-old son Levi’s tee ball game in Surprise on Tuesday night, he had no idea the game at Chase Field would bee delayed.
But he wound up getting the save.
A swarm of bees gathered atop the screen behind home plate just before the scheduled game time for the Dodgers and Arizona Diamondbacks.
“I got a call about five minutes before game time, from our senior manager of events. She doesn’t usually call me about that time, so I knew something was odd,” Diamondbacks vice president of ballpark operations Mike Rock said. “She said, ‘We have bees landing on the net right behind home plate.’ I said, ‘How many.’ She said, ‘Hundreds. No wait, thousands!’ And I knew we had a problem.”
There was discussion of postponing the game entirely. But Rock contacted Blue Sky Pest Control and Hilton, branch office manager, got his call to the big leagues.
“I think he (Levi) was probably a little bummed that I left a little early,” Hilton said of bugging out from the final game of his son’s season. “But I think he’s okay with it now.”
Having sat and waited for more than an hour, the crowd was buzzing for the exterminator’s arrival. As Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding Out for a Hero” and other thematic music blared from the stadium speakers, Hilton rode a scissors lift up to confront the enemy.
There’s no hiving in baseball. Using a “non-pesticidal solution” and a vacuum hose, he sucked up the bees, later to be humanely released – presumably at a farm in the country with a nice family and plenty of room to run around and play.
The Diamondbacks saluted “Bee Guy” on the scoreboard and then gave Hilton his honors, letting him throw out a ceremonial first pitch before the game finally got underway, one hour and 55 minutes late – leaving Hilton with a story that will absolutely kill at the next exterminators’ convention.
After such a long delay, the Diamondbacks scratched scheduled starter Jordan Montgomery and went with Plan Bee – a swarm of relievers. But it was Christian Walker who stung the Dodgers with two home runs, including a two-run walk-off home run in the 10th inning that gave the Diamondbacks a 4-3 victory over the Dodgers.
“Crazy day,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said.
After Hilton’s heroics, the Dodgers quickly went from bees to Ks. They went an entire game without striking out on Monday (the first time a Dodgers team had done that since 2006) but Mookie Betts struck out to start Tuesday’s game and six of the first 11 Dodgers batters went down on strikes.
But the Dodgers struck for “non-pesticidal” runs in the fifth (a bases-loaded wild pitch) and sixth innings (a run-scoring balk) to take a 2-1 lead.
Dodgers starter Landon Knack had completed his pre-game warmups and was ready to go when he got word of the bee delay. Two hours later, he told Roberts he was still ready to pitch and allowed just one run on a solo home run by Walker in the first five innings.
The worker bees from the Dodgers’ bullpen took over from there.
Michael Grove stranded the bases loaded in the sixth. Joe Kelly stranded the tying run at third base in the seventh. But Daniel Hudson gave up the tying run on three hits in the eighth.
Will Smith cashed in the Dodgers’ free runner in the 10th inning to regain the lead but they finished 1 for 11 with runners in scoring position against the Diamondbacks’ relay of relievers.
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The Dodgers’ own bullpen had been depleted. Evan Phillips would have been pitching in his fifth game in the past eight days – a red flag on the bullpen usage chart the Dodgers live by. So Roberts turned to Nabil Crismatt to try and close things out. He did not, giving up the deciding homer to Walker leading off the bottom of the 10th.
It was Walker’s 20th home run in 83 career games against the Dodgers.
“You’ve got to look at the roster and look at who you have available that particular night and go with the best you can,” Roberts explained. “Early on, I wanted to use Hudson in the meat of the order and Cris was going to close the game. That’s just where we were at. So he threw up a zero that first inning (the ninth) and unfortunately we couldn’t tack on more than one in that 10th.
“It’s one of those things that, every team is in that same situation. We’re on the back end of nine (games) in a row, and when you win a lot of games, you use your leverage guys and that’s part of it. You’ve got to figure out ways to navigate.”
Bee Guy was loving every minute of this! pic.twitter.com/4yeGXPHHsj
— SportsNet LA (@SportsNetLA) May 1, 2024
Is Beekeeper Matt Hilton the first guy to get a save BEFORE the game starts? pic.twitter.com/uCRJadnsBT
— MLB (@MLB) May 1, 2024
#Dodgers take a 2-1 lead on a Joe Mantiply balk. pic.twitter.com/ZQuPHWU2l2
— SportsNet LA (@SportsNetLA) May 1, 2024
“I though Landon did a heck of a job… I give him a lot of credit for giving us what he had.” Dave Roberts on Knack’s outing, the Dodgers’ bullpen and more. pic.twitter.com/kTAe58wsEY
— SportsNet LA (@SportsNetLA) May 1, 2024
Landon Knack on how he felt after today’s delay: “I still felt good… there really wasn’t too much lag getting back going, body felt really good.” pic.twitter.com/S8ddhqY54C
— SportsNet LA (@SportsNetLA) May 1, 2024
