A night of flying squirrels and PitchComs at Yankee Stadium

Things got a little squirrely at Yankee Stadium on Tuesday night – and that was before Aaron Judge’s game-tying home run in the ninth inning and Anthony Volpe’s first career walkoff RBI in the 10th.

First, a squirrel scampered across the top of the fence of the Stadium’s famed short porch in rightfield, startling fans and catching the attention of the YES Network cameras.

The furry critter had apparently started its trek in the Yankees bullpen in right-center, where a Yankees reliever threw food his or her way.

After crossing over toward the rightfield corner and scaring fans along the way, the squirrel jumped off the eight-foot wall and landed on the warning track in a scene that was replayed in super slo-mo on YES.

Then, in the ninth inning, Yankees reliever Michael King had a moment.

King, who was outfitted with a PitchCom transmitter on his belt to allow him to call his own pitches, got frustrated when the device wasn’t working and fired it into the stands behind the Yankees’ first-base dugout.

“I got nervous ’cause I know you can call time for PitchCom, but I didn’t know if you could do it for a transmitter malfunction. So I just took it off and chucked it,” King said. “I thought it was definitely going to land in front of our dugout, and then it kind of took off like a frisbee and I saw it floating. And then I saw it almost hit a fan. And then, apparently, they were hitting the button. Luckily it wasn’t working.”

It was the only errant toss of the outing by King, who ended up as the winning pitcher in the Yankees’ 6-5 victory with a scoreless two-inning stint.

“I’m not used to throwing a rectangular little piece of electronics,” King said. “The one that I got didn’t work. I don’t know if it just wasn’t activated or what. It just happened where I was hitting slider at the same time that [catcher] Ben [Rortvedt] was hitting sinker. So every time I hit a slider, it was coming through as sinker.”

Once again, the YES cameras captured the scene, this time of a woman in the stands who ended up with the device and was, apparently, trying to see if it worked after its journey from the mound.  

King is the only Yankees pitcher who uses the device that -- when it works -- allows him to signal what pitch he wants to throw to his catcher.

The Yankees got it back, which is good news for King. MLB could have fined the Yankees $5,000 for “losing” the unit, according to a 2022 memo to clubs.

With the Associated Press

By Anthony Rieber

anthony.rieber@newsday.comAnthonyRieber

Anthony Rieber covers baseball, as well as the NFL, NBA and NHL. He has worked at Newsday since Aug. 31, 1998, and has been in his current position since July 5, 2004.