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E-mail StoryHerb Benham: Biggest Bakersfield Blaze baseball fans? Kit foxes
| Friday, Jul 18 2008 12:10 PM
Last Updated: Friday, Jul 18 2008 1:11 PM
Dead last in the standings. Six games out. Six games under 500.
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Kit foxes that live at the Kern County Museum have been dragging baseballs from Sam Lynn Ball Park, a half mile away, to the museum grounds where their dens are. Employees at the museum have collected more than 100 balls, a few work gloves and an old sock.
The Bakersfield Blaze might be cellar-dwellers, but the team leads the league in supplying balls to the pack of kit foxes near Sam Lynn Ball Park.
Carola Enriquez, director of museum services at the Kern County Museum, called. Apparently the kit foxes trot over to nearby Sam Lynn under the cover of night, pick up the baseballs and bring them back to their dens at the museum.
She guesses the balls are either home runs, foul balls or may exit the park during batting practice.
Enriquez and her staff find them on the museum grounds every morning. They have collected more than 100, and for the skeptics who suspect a kit fox hoax, many of the balls have tiny teeth marks on them and are coated with kit fox slobber.
“Along with the baseballs, we’ve found work gloves, too,” Enriquez said. “We also know kit foxes are extremely fond of pit beef.”
That wasn’t exactly breaking news. This is Bakersfield. Who doesn’t like pit beef?
During a visit to the museum, Enriquez told me that in addition to kit foxes, the 16-acre museum is home to 24 bird species as well as seven feral cats.
We walked to the northern fence of the museum and looked across the dirt fields toward Sam Lynn. The stadium is half a mile away, nothing for a kit fox but a distance to be reckoned with if you are on all fours carrying a ball in your mouth.
Wait a minute, can a kit fox even carry a ball in its mouth? Let’s assume it can. How do you explain the two giant softballs that Enriquez has found along with the baseballs? Could it be that, fueled by the pit beef from the weddings held at the museum, we are growing a race of giant, softball-toting kit foxes?
Putting aside suspicions of an overly large and perhaps genetically superior breed of kit fox, what about the origins of the baseballs themselves. How do the balls get there?
Was it possible the Blaze were driving the ball well, but given their record, just not winning the close ones?
No, it wasn’t. The Blaze hit 128 home runs in 2007, but have managed only 59 home runs thus far in 2008. Blaze pitchers allowed 162 home runs in 2007 , 31 of them lobbed by Andrew Walker. Nothing made a kit fox drool harder than the sight of Walker walking to the mound.
This year it is pitcher Kasey Kiker setting the kit fox heart aflutter.
I called Lloyd Klingenberg who is in charge of reptiles at CALM. The kit fox guy was absent that day so I settled for Klingenberg. He told me kit foxes are like dogs and he had a dog named Patches, so in my estimation, that made him almost an expert.
“Patches will chase anything round,” Klingenberg said. “Maybe the kit foxes like to play with the balls. ”
My next call was to Brian Cypher, research ecologist for Cal State University, Stanislaus, who works with endangered species. Brian was an expert, not just a snake guy like Klingenberg who happened to have a cute dog.
“I’ve heard of kit foxes running on golf courses and stealing golf balls,” Cypher said. “They might think the golf balls are eggs. I don’t know about the baseballs.”
I asked him about the kit foxes’ affinity for work gloves. Cypher was stumped but said that at one time, the kit foxes who lived on White Lane seemed to prefer the wrappers from Del Taco over those from Taco Bell. However when the In-N-Out was built, the kit foxes, along with everybody else, made the transition to the hamburger stand’s simple yet appealing menu.
I said goodbye to Cypher and then remembered something Enriquez had told me. Lillian Massey, a museum employee, had found a ball in front of St. John’s Episcopal Mission on the grounds, lying there as if the kit fox had dropped it in order to be blessed.
This might be one of the balls the Blaze wants back. Who knows, it could help.
Opinions expressed are those of Herb Benham, not The Californian.