As part of our continuing coverage of bees, here’s a report from the Associated Press:

The Diamondbacks’ grounds crew used a combination of cotton candy and lemonade to help disperse a swarm of bees that delayed the San Francisco Giants split squad’s 11-1 win over Arizona for 41 minutes in the second inning Sunday.

With runners on second and third and one out in the second inning, a dark cloud appeared in right field, sending Diamondbacks center fielder Chris Young sprinting toward left.

“I didn’t see them at first I just heard them,” Young said. “I am not afraid of one or two of them. I wouldn’t flinch at that. When you start talking about 500, 600 of them yea, I am afraid of that. …”

INTERRUPTING OUR NATIONAL PASTIME

WE MUST PUT AN END TO THIS MENACE

The AP:

Baseball’s new labor contract includes more video replay, the chance for a longer All-Star break and a small, but likely welcome perk for players: the chance to get a private room instead of a roommate during spring training.

… for players thinking about selling ads on their bodies, MLB has thought ahead. The agreement says “no player may have any visible markings or logos tattooed on his body” as part of the uniform regulations.

“Just trying to head something off at the pass,” said Rob Manfred, baseball’s executive vice president for labor relations.

‘Ili: WHAT DO THEY KNOW THAT WE DON’T

Colin: Derek Monster.com Jeter

The AP:

Octavio Dotel is on the verge of an unusual record.

Dotel has reached an agreement with the Detroit Tigers on a one-year deal, with a team option for 2013. When he takes the mound for the Tigers next season, the right-handed reliever will be playing for a record 13th major league franchise.

Sweet.

Unbelievable story by Mariano Castillo for CNN:

Major league catcher Wilson Ramos has been “found alive,” two days after he was reported kidnapped by gunmen, Venezuelan state TV reported Friday.

Ramos was found by security forces in Montalban, a mountainous region about 60 miles from the north central Venezuelan town where he was last seen, according to a tweet posted late Friday by Communications Minister Andres Izarra.

…

“It has all the earmarks as a targeted kidnapping: selected victim, selected location, selected time,” said Chris Voss, a kidnapping specialist for Insite Security who has handled six cases involving Venezuela and who worked for the FBI for 26 years. “There’s an outside possibility that they thought they were grabbing another member of the family, but that’s extremely unlikely.”

The article actually goes pretty deep into kidnappings and sports players in Latin America. It’s pretty good.

In their game yesterday against the Dodgers, the Brewers turned a beautiful triple play. Adam McCalvy for MLB.com:

With Dodgers at first and second base and nobody out in a scoreless game, James Loney hit a grounder up the middle. [Second baseman Josh] Wilson ranged to his right, gobbled up the baseball and flipped it with his glove to shortstop Yuniesky Betancourt for the first out. Betancourt threw to Prince Fielder at first for out No. 2, and Fielder, seeing Dodgers outfielder Matt Kemp trying to sneak home, fired to catcher George Kottaras for the inning-ending tag.

Even if it had only been a double play, it still would’ve been a good one. Wilson’s glove flip was a nice little move. But Fielder’s heads-up play at first base got the lead runner as he attempted to go from second base to home. Check the link for a video; it’s a nice piece of work.

Recap of today’s game between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Toronto Blue Jays by Anthony Chiang of MLB.com:

After back-to-back singles from B.J. Upton and Matt Joyce that put runners on first and third with one out, Sean Rodriguez executed a safety squeeze play to score Upton. Rodriguez reached first on the sacrifice bunt, as pitcher Carlos Villanueva tossed the ball past the catcher in an attempt to prevent a run from crossing the plate.

It didn’t stop there, though. Tampa Bay called another safety squeeze play during the next at-bat, as Robinson Chirinos reached first on a run-scoring bunt single to earn his first career RBI.

With it working so well, the Rays tried once more. For the third consecutive at-bat, a bunt was used. Desmond Jennings laid one down just inside the third base line that stayed fair to load the bases.

Fuck yeah three bunts in a row. Small ball = greatest ball.

From Bloomberg:

[Luis] Mendoza, who pitches for the Omaha Storm Chasers of the Triple-A Pacific Coast League, took a no-hitter into the ninth inning against the Memphis Redbirds at AutoZone Park in Memphis, Tennessee, on July 18.

A deep drive by Memphis’s Tyler Greene glanced off the glove of leaping Storm Chaser left-fielder David Lough. The play was ruled a two-base error by the Redbirds’ official scorer, John Guinozzo, who decided after the game to change it to a double. He changed it back to an error a short time later.

“In rethinking it, he had changed it once shortly after the game, and then after giving it further consideration, went with his original ruling,” Dwight Hall, the Pacific Coast League’s director of operations, said in a telephone interview today.

Memphis appealed to the league office, which made its ruling of a double last night. It said in a statement on its website that it acted “in consideration of language included in the Official Baseball Rules, and with the benefit of additional time to review the play, including video replay and accounts of the play.”

On the plus side I guess, Mendoza did pitch a no-hitter in 2009, so he does already have one.

On this day seventy years ago, Joe DiMaggio’s hitting streak of fifty-six games came to an end. Kostya Kennedy wrote a piece for Sports Illustrated on the game:

The outs are famous now, two of them anyway: the plays by third baseman Ken Keltner, a gold glover had there been such a thing back then. Twice — in the first inning and again in the seventh — Keltner dived to his left, into foul ground, to glove hard ground balls down the line and take doubles away from DiMaggio. The plays at first base were bang-bang close and DiMaggio believed that the wet ground (it had rained heavily the night before) had slowed his stride, costing him.

Keltner played DiMaggio on the edge of the outfield grass. On either at-bat Joe could have dropped down a bunt and made it to first base at a trot. That was just not something he would do, not even with The Streak on the line. (“Is DiMaggio a good bunter?” Yanks manager Joe McCarthy was once asked. “We’ll never know,” he said.)

The next-longest streak in the major leagues belongs to Willie Keeler, who hit in forty-five straight games across the 1896 and 1897 seasons. That’s eleven fewer games. In the seventy years since the streak, only one person has broken forty games: Pete Rose hit in forty-four straight in 1978.

What’s reported a little less frequently is that, the day after his streak was broken, DiMaggio would start a sixteen-game streak. That means that he hit in seventy-two of seventy-three consecutive games. Jaw-dropping.