The Highlight Of The Night Was This Villainous Squirrel Terrorizing Fans At The Yankee Game To The Joy Of Everyone Watching At Home
Every now and then a rogue creature will find its way into Yankee Stadium. No I'm not talking about someone like Klemmer for the Subway Series, I'm more talking about a stray squirrel or even a cat like a few years ago.
Usually these animals race across the field for a play and then disappear into the night, hoping to find an exit. Well, last night at the game a certain squirrel decided to "terrorize" some fans sitting front row in the outfield. The ensuing video from the YES cameras was spectacular.
You can tell a lot about someone and where they're from based on how they react to a rogue squirrel. Like these two folks.
You'd think they just saw their first naked woman. Never have once encountered a squirrel in their lives. Probably thought this was an alien of some sort. Closest they've come to the wilderness is on a golf course at their country club. Adversity is not something they've had to handle much to this point. That was until this villainous critter invaded their lives and threatened them for all they have.
The other friend of their group also terrified for his own life. Good on him for pointing out the animal for everyone else to see in case they were unaware. Yes, that is in fact a squirrel. The older gentleman next to him couldn't be less concerned. Probably wanted to snatch the little fella for himself and take him home as a pet. Would love to see everyone's heart rate and how much they vary here.
These folks below had it down correct. Like obviously you have to be a little concerned about the squirrel situation. If the little guy decides to head into the stands the last thing you need is a rabid squirrel attacking you mid-game. Best course of action is to stay calm, don't move a muscle as if there's a T-Rex in front of you, and just pray the squirrel continues on its way.
And that's exactly what happened. Captured in slo-mo this confused, terrified, lost squirrel made the suicide jump off the wall for its grand escape.
And of course the squirrel was perfectly fine. Now a leap of 8 feet is obviously not going to do anything to this kind of animal. There's some science that shows no jump is too big for a squirrel to attempt and live to tell the tale.
Squirrels, in theory, can survive a fall from an object of any height due to two factors: their size and their mass. A force (such as the force of gravity) is calculated by multiplying mass and acceleration. The acceleration due to gravity on Earth is always roughly 9.81 m/s2, regardless of what object it is acting on. Squirrels are not very heavy—a grey squirrel only weighs about 0.5 kg—meaning that the force acting on a falling squirrel just isn't that big.
On top of being small, squirrels are fluffy and intuitively spread their bodies out when falling. This allows them to experience as much wind resistance as possible, slowing down their rate of descent. Some squirrels even use this fact to glide through the air. While gliding is not the same as flight, we nonetheless call them flying squirrels.
For these two reasons, the terminal velocity (fastest speed while falling) of squirrels is slow enough that they will, at least in principle, never fall so hard that they hurt themselves. (source)
Fun stuff! Now if only they could survive cars they'd practically be immortal.
At the time of the squirrel's antics the Yankees were not doing so hot. In fact I would have taken more squirrel time on TV than actual game play. That was until Aaron Judge decided to continue his God-like tear of destroying baseballs.
And Volpe came through in the 10th with some good situational hitting to walk it off.
Just like that the squirrel wasn't the talk of the town nor was DJ LeMahieu's inexplicable bunt in the 7th. Instead it was the Yankees who overcame a bad Gerrit Cole start to come back and beat the O's in a fun one at the stadium. Recapped it all real quick over on the Tok.
Finally this team is playing consistent good baseball. Keep it going tonight with Nestor on the bump.