Seagulls see stadium as smorgasbord
For all the beauty and fanfare that comes with playing in a stadium located right on the water, the San Francisco Giants have had to battle a familiar pest with annoying regularity this season: Seagulls.
While the birds have always hovered in and around AT&T Park, for whatever reason this season they seem to be flocking to the stadium in particularly large numbers.
It was first noticeable at the World Baseball Classic, and the problem has persisted through the first few months of the regular season.
Whereas normally the seagulls arrive late in the game to munch on leftover food, this year players and fans have noticed that they’re encroaching on the stands and the field earlier than before.
There are several theories as to why the seagulls are flocking to games in larger numbers this year. Jorge Costa, the Giants’ senior vice president of field operations, told the Wall Street Journal that there may be a shortage of fish in the Bay.
“They’ll go to where the food source is easiest,” Costa said.
To counteract the large numbers of seagulls, the team has played bird-distress calls on the loudspeakers and encouraged fans to be raucous. This doesn’t always work, however, because the seagulls use certain cues to figure out when to return. For example, when they hear the singing in the seventh-inning stretch after the top of the seventh, they know the game is almost over and there is soon to be tons of free food for the taking.
Dozing off
The Cincinnati Bengals will be featured in the HBO series Hard Knocks: Training Camp.
Wrote Reggie Hayes of the News-Sentinel of Fort Wayne, Ind.: “After previous years featured the Cowboys and Jets, producers picked the Bengals because they felt HBO viewers aren’t getting enough sleep.”
A giant fan of the ’Boys
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie surprised some schoolchildren when he told them his favorite football team is the Dallas Cowboys.
His pronouncement Tuesday at a school in Sayreville, N.J., drew shouts, gasps and some boos.
But his love of the Cowboys is no secret. In 2010, the then-rookie governor proclaimed his favorite sports teams to be the Cowboys, the New York Mets, the New York Knicks and the New York Rangers.
Christie says those are teams he grew up rooting for.
The governor, now running for re-election, joked that being a Cowboys fan “is not the smartest thing for the governor of New Jersey to be.”
Quote of the day
“The parents were there and they were in charge and were going make those girls practice 8-10 hours a day and that’s not how the American players work.” LPGA golfer Brittany Lincicome on the South Koreans’ success on the LPGA Tour
Sports, Pages 20 on 06/20/2013