The wrong kind of buzz had overtaken the stadium.
“We have bees landing on the net right behind home plate.”
“How many?” he asked.
“Hundreds. No wait, thousands!”
Rock immediately jumped into action.
“I knew we had a problem,” he said.
Indeed, with a swarm of bees wrapped around the top of the protective screen behind home plate, the start of Tuesday’s game between the Arizona Diamondbacks and visiting Dodgers — a 4-3 extra-innings Diamondbacks win decided on Christian Walker’s walk-off two-run homer in the 10th — was delayed by almost two hours, as Rock and his staff scrambled to call in a bee removal expert to the stadium.
Their knight in polyester armor: Matt Hilton, the Phoenix branch manager for Blue Sky Pest Control, the team’s go-to stadium pest company.
Hilton was across town at his 6-year-old son’s T-ball game when he received a call about the bee problem. A 15-year employee of Blue Sky, he quickly jumped in his car, made the half-hour drive to downtown Phoenix, and removed the bees just in time to prevent the game from being postponed.
“It was certainly discussed,” Rock said, noting that he and the game umpires were in contact with MLB’s league office. “It was really close.”
Instead, Rock arrived to a hero’s welcome, serenaded with cheers — as well as the playing of Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding Out for a Hero” — as he was carted to home plate and hoisted to the top of the 30-foot screen by a mechanical scissor lift.
“We know that this was really important to get these games going,” Hilton said. “So when we hear that there’s bee issues out at Diamondbacks stadium we tried to get at it right away.”
“There was zero traffic,” he added with a relieved smile. “Thankfully.”
Wearing a protective suit and a large mesh head covering, Hilton sprayed the bee colony with a “nonpesticidal solution” before humanely vacuuming them up and taking them off site.
“It was a little nerve-racking, I’m not going to lie,” Hilton said. “Lot of pressure to get this game going. But I was happy to come and take care of it.”
With some 30,000 fans watching him, Hilton didn’t shy away from the spotlight.
As the lift returned to the ground, he pumped up the crowd by waving his arms, prompting chants of “MVP” in response from the crowd. Then, shortly before the 8:35 p.m. first pitch — which came 1 hour, 55 minutes after the originally scheduled 6:40 p.m. start time — Hilton was invited to throw out the ceremonial first pitch, wearing his headgear to the mound before theatrically ripping it off, almost pro-wrestling style.
“I kind of ate it up a little bit for a little moment,” he said with a laugh. “It was a fun time.”
Before Hilton’s arrival, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts told SportsNet LA that the teams did consider starting the game before the bees’ removal, but there were too wary of potential safety concerns.
“If a foul ball hits the screen,” Roberts said, “what happens to the bees at that point?”
Thanks to Hilton, no one had to find out.
“I’m happy we got the game in,” Roberts said afterward. “Obviously you don’t want to lose a game … But it was a crazy situation. I thought that the Diamondbacks, and that exterminator, did a nice job of taking care of the situation in a timely manner.”
The end of Tuesday’s contest was also extended, after the Diamondbacks (14-17) forced extra innings by erasing a one-run deficit lead against reliever Daniel Hudson in the eighth.
The Dodgers (19-13) did briefly lead in the top of the 10th on a Will Smith sacrifice fly.
But, with closer Evan Phillips unavailable Tuesday (he’d pitched four of the previous seven days), and the Dodgers’ already thin bullpen still reeling from Ryan Brasier’s calf strain a day earlier (an injury that could sideline the right-hander up to two months), swingman Nabil Crismatt couldn’t hold on in the bottom half of the inning, hanging an inside changeup that Walker crushed for his second home run of the night.
“That’s just where we were at,” Roberts said of the state of the club’s banged-up bullpen. “We’re on the back end of nine [games] in a row, and when you win a lot of games, you use your leverage guys. That’s part of it. You’ve got to figure out ways to navigate.”
As Walker rounded the bases, what remained of the Chase Field crowd erupted in cheers.
The only louder ovation Tuesday? The one Hilton’s heroics received back at the start of the night.
“People were pretty hyped up,” Hilton said in an interview with the Diamondbacks broadcast. “It was pretty cool.”