Times change, but some things are always interesting. Ted Williams was known to routinely bring a rifle to Fenway Park on off-days and shoot pigeons flying over the outfield. There was little complaining outside of some mild cursing from the grounds crew picking up what remained of the birds. A few decades later baseball’s highest paid athlete was under arrest for killing a seagull.
Dave Winfield was part of a New York Yankees team visiting Toronto for a road series in late 1983. The final game of this series was about to enter the fifth inning and fielders were throwing around baseballs to stay loose. Winfield was in center and lobbed the ball towards the foul line as play was about to get underway. The ball never made it completely off the field, as it struck and killed one of the many seagulls that often flew into Exhibition Stadium. The incident raised a few eyebrows and elicited more than one person throwing their hands up in disbelief, but did not otherwise delay the game or provide much of a distraction.
Things were different by the time the game ended. Local police arrested Winfield at the stadium on account of causing unnecessary suffering of an animal. Charges were dropped the following morning and Toronto’s PR staff quickly arranged to get Winfield back across the border before anyone could change their mind. There was something of a danger in this, as the Toronto Humane Society made this a focus of the organization in 1983 and went as far as ordering an autopsy from the University of Guelph. Results concluded the bird had been terminally ill prior to impact and likely did not possess the proper reaction time to dodge the ball.
I don’t think Winfield meant to hurt the bird, in the same way that drivers do not intend to hit squirrels and other small animals in the road. Little kids have a time-honored tradition of jumping into flocks of birds that quickly dart away to safety. There is an assumption drawn from experience that most animals are more than capable of easily evading an oncoming object. I’m not sold on the idea that Winfield wasn’t aiming for the bird, but intent to hurt the animal was clearly not present. A 6’6″ player with a strong arm, his toss bounced on the ground before reaching the bird. Firing a laser throw at his target would have looked much different.
Years later Winfield would return to Toronto as a member of the Blue Jays and take part in bringing the team its first World Series championship. More than one writer joked at the time of his signing that he wasn’t joining Toronto so much as being extradited to the city.
