Benjamin Kepple

Baseball is More Interesting With Attacking Hordes of Mayflies

SO I WAS WATCHING the Utah-Louisville game tonight when I noticed the score in the Yankees-Indians game was tied at one run apiece in the top of the 9th inning. I am not much of a baseball fan, but even I am a sucker for a tied playoff game. I turned on the game and noticed, much to my surprise, that Jacobs Field in Cleveland was simply swarming with mayflies. The players were swatting at them. The pitchers were covered with them. They were readily apparent to the eye -- and it was a sight, I am assured, that was even more amazing in high-definition.

This was even more incredible than watching the Utah Utes light up the scoreboard in Louisville every time I checked back there. Apparently, I didn't see the worst of it, either. The mayflies were reportedly so bad in the 8th inning that one of the Yankees pitchers got hugely distracted as a result, eventually allowing Cleveland to tie the game -- which they then won in the 11th inning, putting the Indians up 2-0 in the series.

The reason for the invasion was apparently due to the warm weather, which tricked the nasty little bugs into waking up and climbing out of Lake Erie long before they were supposed to do so. If global warming is responsible, then I think it's important to note that global warming meant the Yankees lost, and as such can't be all that bad.

That aside, though, I have to say the baseball was a lot more interesting with the attacking hordes of mayflies. One of the glorious things about football, of course, is that it is played in pretty much every type of weather -- and bad weather is actually welcomed, as it will make the game more interesting and will heighten the excitement of the fans. I don't see why baseball can't do the same thing. Teams don't necessarily have to play amidst a swarm of locusts, of course, but some sort of additional elements out of the teams' control would really make things interesting. Especially because the games ... just ... drag ... on ... regardless of whether they actually go into extra innings or not. We saw how that happened in the Yankees-Indians game tonight. I swear, it took a good five or six minutes just to get through one at-bat.