NEW YORK — A squirrel ran onto the field during Friday night’s game between the Yankees and the Red Sox and caused a brief delay.
The speedy critter emerged from an area behind the plate in the fourth inning and stopped behind Boston rookie Jhostynxon Garcia’s left foot as the outfielder took a timeout and adjusted his batting gloves. The squirrel stopped for a second on the third-base foul line before heading to the front of the mound, where it briefly tried to dig a hole as Yankee ace Max Fried looked on.
“I said, ‘Really, that’s going to happen to me in my MLB debut, that’s unbelievable,” Garcia said through an interpreter after Boston’s 1-0 win.
After stopping on the mound, the squirrel sped toward first baseman Ben Rice and went past first base umpire Carlos Torres and down the right-field line.
“I didn’t want to touch that thing,” Rice said. “The guys are giving me crap for it. ‘Why are you scared of a squirrel?’ I don’t know where that thing’s been. It made a little noise at me.”
Once play resumed, Fried walked Garcia by throwing a pitch to the backstop as the squirrel continued to try to find an exit.
On May 23, 2023, another squirrel briefly delayed play between the Orioles and Yankees when it ran through the outfield at Yankee Stadium.
The Orioles were also the visiting team in New York on Aug. 2, 2021, when a cat delayed play for several minutes in the eighth inning.
The cat sped through left field, then got on the warning track and dashed back and forth. The feline climbed up on the low padding along the wall and tried to scale the bullpen fence, but kept falling back down.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.