A Bee Delay

[M-V-🐝! M-V-🐝!]
Earlier this week, a Major League Baseball game was delayed nearly two hours due to…bees. That’s amusing, but it has happened before. It was actually what happened after the bees were cleared that stood out to me.

When the bees were discovered near home plate, the teams knew the game would have to be delayed.

D-backs vice president of operations Mike Rock was alerted to the problem, and he told both managers that there would be a delay. The danger was that a foul ball that hit near that area would disturb the bees and cause them to move down toward fans or players.

At that point, Rock called Blue Sky Pest Control. The company called employee Matt Hilton away from his son’s tee ball game and drastically altered the course of his day:

Once Hilton arrived at the ballpark, he was ushered into a cart and driven onto the field, where he received a standing ovation from the crowd.
“I wasn’t [expecting that],” Hilton said. “I thought I was just going to do my thing and cruise out. But it was fun.”

Indeed, he played to the crowd, waving his arms for them to make more noise. As the scissor lift took him up toward where the bees were gathered, Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding Out for a Hero” blared over the public address system.

While the crowd cheered, Hilton calmed the bees with a non-toxic spray, then vacuumed them up for release elsewhere. After that, the field was ready for play.

However, before the game started, Hilton was called upon once again. For his second act, he delivered a ceremonial first pitch, which is both amazing and ridiculous. How exactly did it come about? Who made that call? Didn’t Arizona already have someone lined up for to do that?

I can think of only three explanations.

There were multiple first pitches
Semantically, that’s not possible, of course. Nevertheless, I have definitely seen multiple ceremonial “first” pitches at a ballgame, and it could’ve happened here.

The delay led to scheduling issues
Given that the game was delayed almost two hours, it’s possible the person originally scheduled to toss out a first pitch had to go. In this scenario, Hinton stepped up twice to play the hero.

Matt Hilton bumped the original first pitcher
This is my favorite possibility. I hope some local celebrity was scheduled to throw out the first pitch, until Arizona told them they’d been bumped.

I’d very much like to know which of the above occurred.

Link: https://theathletic.com/5222650/2024/01/23/bucks-adrian-griffin-firing-why-doc-rivers/