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I was watching the Indians-Yankees game and this had to be one of the most bizarre things I've seen in sports. It was like something from a sci-fi movie.
There were clouds of insects circling around all the players. The pitcher was trying to pitch and insects were crawling all over his face and the back of his face. Not surprisingly, he walked the batter on 4 pitches, his 5th pitch was a wild pitch that sent the runner to second, and, eventually, the Indians scored the tying run on a wild pitch.
The funniest scene in the game was the Yankees base coach trying to wave away hordes of insects. It's a bunt! No, it's a steal! Who knows what's going to happen!
You could almost tell which players were going to do well and which were going to bomb by how much time they spent waving bugs away. It completely broke the concentration of a lot of the players.
The reason was abnormally warm weather. They normally come out in June (they're also called mayflies and June bugs). On a positive note, another reason for the hordes of insects was the effort to clean up Lake Erie (the Cuyahoga River which drains into Lake Erie once caught fire). Mayflies had completely disappeared from the area during the 50's and 60's.
http://www.northcountrytrail.org/news/mayfly1.htm - it was a sign of good times for Cleveland - they contributed to the Indians tying the game.
There were clouds of insects circling around all the players. The pitcher was trying to pitch and insects were crawling all over his face and the back of his face. Not surprisingly, he walked the batter on 4 pitches, his 5th pitch was a wild pitch that sent the runner to second, and, eventually, the Indians scored the tying run on a wild pitch.
The funniest scene in the game was the Yankees base coach trying to wave away hordes of insects. It's a bunt! No, it's a steal! Who knows what's going to happen!
You could almost tell which players were going to do well and which were going to bomb by how much time they spent waving bugs away. It completely broke the concentration of a lot of the players.
The reason was abnormally warm weather. They normally come out in June (they're also called mayflies and June bugs). On a positive note, another reason for the hordes of insects was the effort to clean up Lake Erie (the Cuyahoga River which drains into Lake Erie once caught fire). Mayflies had completely disappeared from the area during the 50's and 60's.
http://www.northcountrytrail.org/news/mayfly1.htm - it was a sign of good times for Cleveland - they contributed to the Indians tying the game.
Each June, like a scene from a horror film, millions of adult mayflies swarm from the lake's shallow waters and move inland for a short but spectacular shore leave. Mayflies mate in flight, after which the female flies back over the water and deposits as many as 8,000 eggs. There, her eggs sink into the sediment at the lake’s bottom. The entire process – from the time the mayfly nymph emerges from the water to molt, mate and die – takes only 24 to 72 hours.
While their annual reproduction ritual is a nuisance for locals who must scrape swarming mayflies from windshields and shovel them off porches and roadways, it is a life-affirming sign for biologists who understand the insects' important role in Lake Erie's intricate food chain.
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