There's been quite a few fowl balls around baseball lately.
Word is that the Nationals bullpen has been keeping pet ducks in the pen on their current trip to Colorado.
Nats beat writer Amanda Comak "tweeted" last night that Nationals starting pitcher Gio Gonzalez encountered three ducks sitting on the plate in the bullpen when he went out to warm up last night in Colorado. Nationals reliever Ryan Mattheus then confirmed the report, claiming that the water fowl have their own private pond, and that he and his Nationals bullpen brethren crack sunflower seeds for the birds and feed them during games. The diversion probably help put the Nationals bullpen at ease for when they have to enter a tight game with a lot of ducks on the pond.
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Another "tweeter" by the name of Philip Senerchia later produced a screen shot of the bullpen ducks from his television set:
A Deadspin reader submitted a video of the bullpen ducks, which was erroneously thought to be footage of Nats reliever Tyler Clippard cruelly spitting on the ducks, when in fact he was shelling seeds in his mouth and then discarding them to the birds of food.
"When I was in the bullpen, there was three ducks standing by home plate. I was just impressed by the whole situation," Gonzalez told the Washington Post. "We had to tell Flo [Jesus Flores] to scoot them over. It was kind of cool. That’s the one thing I’m always going to remember about Colorado. I was admiring the ducks."
This comes just days after New York Mets reliever Tim Byrdak housed a pet chicken in the Mets clubhouse, which really gave the Mets something to crow about until Byrdak eventually gave the bird up for adoption.
Bullpen pitchers have always been known to have too much time on their hands, which often leads to wacky antics - but this is the first time I've ever heard of a Major League bullpen getting up to quacky antics.
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