How Bugs Drive Baseball Batty

I polled some ballplayers to find out which ballpark got their vote as the buggiest of them all. Some National Leaguers thought Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego was hot stuff in the moth department, and others gave a solid vote to Atlanta for giant cockroaches. Some American Leaguers favored the Texas Rangers' Arlington Stadium, and a few nostalgic votes were cast for Minnesota's old Metropolitan Stadium. "The mosquitoes there were unbelievable," said Atlanta Braves outfielder Billy Sample. "A few of them could have passed for dogs."

But as the votes were counted, one place kept echoing through the mosquito netting again and again. Kansas City's groundskeeper, George Toma, said, "The worst for bugs? That has to be Cleveland. They've got those Canadian bomber mosquitoes that come in off Lake Erie."

"Cleveland! Oh, the spiders you find in Cleveland!" yelped White Sox catcher Ron Hassey, a former Indian. Yankee second baseman Willie Randolph said, "Cleveland leads the league in spiders."

When the votes were counted, Cleveland Stadium was by far the popular choice as the buggiest ballpark in the majors. "It must be an ideal habitat," mused Ohio State University entomologist William F. Lyons when informed of these results. "Since spiders feed on other insects, they are a good measure of overall insect activity. You're getting a lot of aquatic insects up there from Lake Erie that you won't find at most other major league ballparks, so the spiders are absolutely thriving."

And so I went to Cleveland, and as I stood in the parking lot in an afternoon drizzle and stared up at the proud relic that is Cleveland Stadium I thought, "This is the Acropolis of Insects."

A little history: The Cleveland baseball club of the Gaslight Era, 1889-1899, was called the Cleveland Spiders. The current Indians media guide carefully explains that the Spiders got their name because the 1889 team, which had a 20-134 record, had an unusual number of tall, skinny players. A likely story.

More recently, the Cleveland team actually had an insect for a mascot, the Baseball Bug, circa 1980-82. "That might have been the worst mascot in baseball history," says Royals announcer Fred White. The Baseball Bug had a globe-shaped red body, wore a blue vest and resembled no insect I had seen in my travels.

So much for history. I stepped out of the Indians' dugout and walked to the visitors' bullpen, down the rightfield foul line. My eyes were drawn first to the peeling paint on the bullpen bench and then to the shadows behind the bench. They were thick with cobwebs, yet nothing moved in those shadows.

I sat down, disappointed. I looked up. And there it was, silhouetted against the sky: a monstrous web, hanging beneath the bullpen roof. A live large-bodied spider was vibrating at its center. Something moved just beyond my vision. I looked. Another spider was spinning a separate web. My eyes caught more movements. Yes, more spiders, more cobwebbing. The webs were full of dead bugs.

Good god! How long had visiting pitchers been forced to wait under that macabre lace?