Zac Gallen kills bird with warm-up pitch like Randy Johnson
A bird met its fate — again thanks to a Diamondbacks pitcher.
Diamondbacks starter Zac Gallen was warming up in the outfield before the team’s game against the A’s on Wednesday at Oakland Coliseum when one of his curveballs hit and killed a bird.
It was an off-day workout for Gallen, who last started on Saturday against the Giants in a 7-2 Arizona win.
The Bally Sports Arizona broadcast said Gallen “couldn’t wait to tell everybody” and it revealed that the bird is “no longer with us.”
The broadcast also noted that Gallen took some time to “recognize” the bird’s passing.
The 27-year-old Gallen is 6-1 with a 2.35 ERA in nine starts this season.
Arizona starter Zac Gallen killed a bird with a pitch during warm-ups on Wednesday. Ballys Sports
Zac Gallen struck and killed a bird with a warm-up pitch in Oakland on Wednesday. Getty Images
He has twice finished in the top 10 in National League Cy Young voting with the Diamondbacks.
It has been over 22 years since Randy Johnson, another former Diamondbacks pitcher, blew up a bird with a pitch in a spring training game against the Giants on March 24, 2001.
“A blur going across home plate. The ball simultaneously hitting that blur,” Johnson recalled in an interview with Fox Sports Arizona in 2016. “It’s just hard to really put that in perspective. It happened so quick.”
Randy Johnson struck a bird with a pitch in a 2001 Spring Training game. Arizona Diamondbacks
“It literally just turned into a cloud of feathers,” former Diamondbacks manager Bob Brenly remembered.
Mike Swanson, a former PR director for the team, talked about how Johnson did not find the situation humorous.
“As odd as this may sound, there was a life lost in this,” Swanson told the outlet. “And Randy is a conservationist, and Randy said, ‘I don’t find this very funny.'”
Indeed, Johnson said he got in hot water with PETA over the pitch.
“I was considered a bird killer, and they were actually considering filing charges on the bird’s behalf,” Johnson recalled.
Source: New York Post
