Members of the New York Mets caught a baby raccoon in their weight room before the team's series finale game against the Los Angeles Dodgers Sunday.
The critter was calm and easy to usher into a cage in the Citi Field clubhouse, although it is unclear as to why the baseball team had a cage on hand.
"I guess they have a
problem," Bobby Parnell, Mets pitcher, told ESPN.
The cage may have been a remnant of a 2012 prank, where former team member Tim Byrdak bought an $8 Chinatown chicken and set the bird free in the team’s clubhouse in response to Frank Francisco’s comments that the Yankees were “chickens,” ESPN reported. The team named the chicken Little Jerry Seinfeld.
"Yeah, but that was intentional," Terry Collins, Mets manager, told ESPN.
Like the chicken, the team also named the raccoon before setting the animal free in a less populated area of Queens. Parnell credited “Rally the Raccoon” with the team’s win on Sunday.
“I’d try to keep it,” Parnell told New York Daily News. “We scored 15 runs, he was obviously in the building.”
ESPN’s Adam Rubin was at the field live-tweeting the incident while the animal was on the loose:
The team will remember the day’s game for more than the presence of woodland animals, though. Mets pitcher Jacob deGrom kept up his record, which was 10-5 at Citi Field on the day of the incident.