If you heard the story that Julio Rodríguez knocked a pigeon out of the sky at Yankee Stadium, you’re not alone. The tale has been making the rounds thanks to comic Jordan Jensen, who posted a reel from the Sunday August 13th Yankees game and described Rodríguez firing a ball into the stands and supposedly killing a pigeon. The clip, titled “The Perfect Throw,” has been passed around enough that Mariners fans were bound to ask the obvious question: did that actually happen?
Rodríguez got asked about it just hours after the reel reached Jensen’s 822 thousand Instagram followers, and he hadn’t seen it yet. He watched through the video and rolled his eyes at Jensen’s extended explanation of what a “Mariner” is, saying, “that’s not funny”.
But he did appreciate the way she described his throw and his interaction with fans: “Of course I throw a ball to the kids. Of course I do that.”
When the story got to the pigeon, though, Rodríguez shut it down fast.
“No way,” he said. “No, no, no. No way.”
His version is that the ball did hit a pigeon, one of several birds circling the outfield late in the game looking for food, but that the bird was stunned rather than killed. It fell, but not in the dramatic Randy Johnson-style fashion the story suggested.
Mariners bullpen catcher Justin Novak, who was in the bullpen when it happened, says the same thing. According to Novak, the grounds crew collected the pigeon and placed it in a shaded spot in the Mariners bullpen, under an overhanging bit of wall, so it could recover. It stayed there through the rest of the game, with bullpen members checking on it now and then.
“It was just sitting there like, bro, what? ”
“But as far as we know, that pigeon is fine.”
Novak and Rodríguez also say the crowd’s reaction was real. Yankees fans were chanting “pigeon killer!”
at Rodríguez, and, as Novak put it, “we love pigeons!” Rodríguez leaned into the moment after a routine flyout from Trent Grisham in the next inning, the only ball that would reach him in the outfield for the rest of the afternoon.
So the answer is no: Julio Rodríguez did not kill a pigeon. But if you’re looking for Halloween inspiration, the Julio-and-the-Pigeon couples costume is right there waiting for somebody to make it happen.
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