Five minutes before the Arizona Diamondbacks were set to play the Los Angeles Dodgers, a swarm of bees swooped onto the field and assembled themselves into a bristling sort of clump on top of the netting behind home plate. It was unclear why the bees had chosen this spot, and it was uncanny how they had perfectly timed their arrival to the game's first pitch. Perhaps they had been inspired by the feral colony of 2,500 to 3,000 bees that swarmed the court in the third game of the Indian Wells quarterfinal between Carlos Alcaraz and Alexander Zverev, only to be safely vacuumed up by local bee hero Lance Davis of Killer Bee Live Removal.
Arizona needed a bee hero of its own, and Matt Hilton, the branch manager for Blue Sky Pest Control's Phoenix office (who has the face of a photorealistic Mr. Incredible), picked up the call while watching his son's tee-ball game. Hilton scurried to the stadium where, more than an hour after the scheduled first pitch, he took a jaunty ride in a cart that brought him to the bees. He also pumped his fist several times to his audience's extreme pleasure. Zoom zoom!
Hilton donned his bee-vacuuming uniform—green gloves with a combination jacket and netted hood—and ascended a scissor lift rather heroically to meet the bees. There, he sprayed the bees to stun them and began slurping the colony up with his vacuum as the loudspeakers played “Holding Out for a Hero” by Bonnie Tyler. He vacuumed up an unknown but certainly impressive number of bees with ease, and after he had removed the swarm and descended the scissor lift, it was time for more fist pumps, to which the crowd enthusiastically responded, Woohoo!
To celebrate his heroic efforts, Hilton dropped his hood and threw out the ceremonial first pitch in the laudably bee-free field. The game proceeded as normal, electrified by the brief but unforgettable tenure of the bees. One team defeated the other team, and if you want more details about that, you can read some other blog. But Hilton appeared to be the real winner of the night—immediately beloved by the crowd and many others, as evinced by a fancam of his bee removal that dropped at midnight.
And what of the bees? They were not killed, but treated with a non-pesticidal solution. They will be released far away from the baseball field, according to CBS Sports. Their intentions on Tuesday night remain unknown. Did they want to build a new hive in the protective netting, or had they simply come to watch the game? The latter idea might not be so outlandish. A baseball game is in fact a welcoming environment for a bee, who does not need to pay for a ticket, wait in a line, or shell out for concessions. Do not cast them as villains simply because they love to hear the crack of the bat up close. Perhaps they would not cause delays if they just had a designated box!
If Hilton is receiving his bee-removal flowers, so should these bees. Without them, Hilton would have never become a beloved bee hero. Let us remember them, together, for their brief and memorable collaboration in the great American game of bee-ball.
