Bees delay start of game, then Dodgers get stung by walk-off loss

About 10 minutes before first pitch at Chase Field on Tuesday night, the ballpark’s vice president of operations, Mike Rock, received a call from a colleague.

The wrong kind of buzz had overtaken the stadium.

“We have bees landing on the net right behind home plate,” the caller said.

“How many?” he asked.

“Hundreds. No wait, thousands!”

Rock immediately jumped into action.

“I knew we had a problem,” he said.

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Indeed, with a swarm of bees wrapped around the top of the protective screen, the start of the Arizona Diamondbacks’ game against the Dodgers was delayed by almost two hours, as Rock and his staff scrambled to call in a bee removal expert.

Then their knight in polyester armor — Matt Hilton, the Phoenix branch manager for Blue Sky Pest Control — arrived to great fanfare, and hours later the crowd celebrated again after a 4-3 Diamondbacks win on Christian Walker’s walk-off homer in the 10th.

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 of the possibility of postponement, noting that he and the umpires were in contact with the league office. “It was really close.”

Instead, Hilton 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. He pumped up the crowd by waving his arms, prompting chants of “M-V-P!” Then, shortly before the 8:35 start, Hilton was invited to throw out the ceremonial first pitch, wearing his headgear to the mound before theatrically ripping it off like a pro wrestler.

“I kind of ate it up a little bit for a little moment,” he said with a laugh. “It was a fun time.”

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts told SportsNet LA that the teams did consider starting the game before the bees’ removal.

But, Roberts said, “If a foul ball hits the screen, 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. “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 the game also was pushed back, after the Diamondbacks forced extra innings by erasing a one-run deficit against reliever Daniel Hudson in the eighth.

The Dodgers briefly led in the top of the 10th on Will Smith’s sacrifice fly. But with closer Evan Phillips unavailable — he’d pitched four of the previous seven days — and the Dodgers’ already thin bullpen further depleted by Ryan Brasier’s calf strain a day earlier — an injury that could sideline him for up to two months — right-hander Nabil Crismatt couldn’t hold on in the bottom half of the inning. Making just his third appearance as a Dodger, Crismatt hung 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 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 told the Diamondbacks broadcast. “It was pretty cool.”

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.