Brewer-Yankee Game Is for the Birds

Nearly 100 sea gulls swooped down on County Stadium during Friday’s game between the New York Yankees and Milwaukee Brewers, creating a bizarre scene as players tried to catch and hit a white baseball in a flurry of white birds.

Stadium personnel sounded a siren and a factory whistle to try to scare the birds off, but they returned each time. Then, with the theme music from Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” playing over the loud speakers, a sign on the scoreboard called for “Noise, Noise, Noise.” It didn’t work.

“I went out and asked the umpires if the ball hit the birds if we’d play off them,” Yankee Manager Buck Showalter said after New York’s 5-4 victory.

“If it hits a bird, it’s in play. You just play it off the bird. We thought we had a chance to get ‘birded’ out.”

Gary Vanden Berg, the Brewers director of grounds, said the birds were apparently in search of hatching moths, whose nests were located in the outfield and infield grass.