There are very few members of the animal kingdom that can give a Tiger a fright. One of them, evidently, is a squirrel.
A black squirrel was on the loose at Comerica Park on Tuesday, and as it scurried toward the Detroit bullpen, Tigers reliever Tyler Holton wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Just as he went to peer through the chainlink fence at the level of the warning track, the agile and ambitious squirrel leaped into his line of sight, and a startled Holton jumped backwards.
"Watch Tyler Holton," the Tigers announcers laughed on the broadcast. "Oh boy, look out."
Unlike Holton, left fielder Riley Greene was relatively unfazed while the squirrel made its trip around the outfield.
"Riley Greene's like, 'Who invited Rocky?'" play-by-play man Jason Benetti quipped.
Benetti was of course referring to the classic cartoon flying squirrel, and while the one on the field never went airborne, it did show off its climbing skills by scaling the fence and eventually making its way through the chainlink to join Holton and his fellow relievers. And apparently the squirrel felt quite comfortable among them, spending the rest of the game out there in the bullpen dugout.
"He kept coming back to me," Tommy Kahnle said. "He liked me. I don't know."
"Tommy didn't have a lot of friends growing up," fellow reliever Will Vest joked, "so he talked to squirrels."
Guess all of this amounted to The Adventures of Rocky and Bullpenwinkle?
-- with reporting from Jason Beck