Texas MLB Capsules: Bee swarm delays Astros' 7-2 win; Rangers in trouble?

SAN DIEGO - It was the kind of late-inning buzz that none of the players had experienced before.

The Houston Astros - who once had the "Killer Bs" - beat the San Diego Padres 7-2 on Thursday, but only after waiting out a 52-minute delay in the top of the ninth inning caused when a swarm of bees took over left field at Petco Park.

It certainly gave a new meaning to getaway day.

"It's how this year's going. Bizarre things. You think you've seen it all in baseball and you're going to see something new," said Houston's Geoff Blum, who hit a three-run homer and finished with four RBIs.

The drama began with Houston leading 6-1 with two outs in the top of the ninth. San Diego's Kyle Blanks started walking in from left field, trying to get shortstop Everth Cabrera to call time. It ended when a beekeeper obliterated a ball of bees that followed a queen bee under a ballgirl's jacket that was slung over the back of a chair down the left-field line.

"I kind of saw one or two floating around my head," Blanks said. "Then I turned around and there was a wall. I started to walk in and tried to get Everth to call time."

Blanks said he was allergic to bees. "It's not something I want to tempt," he said.

He wondered what would happen if Miguel Tejada pulled a ball down the line.

"It was a pretty thick wall of bees and I really didn't want a piece of it," he said.

"The umpires made the right call to stop the game," Padres president Tom Garfinkel said. "There's a couple thousand bees there. If they decide to swarm on a person, whether that's a player, an employee or obviously a fan, we could have a real situation."

The game was halted at 3:09 p.m. Five minutes later, both teams were cleared from the field.

The beekeeper arrived at 3:56 p.m., quickly did his job to applause from the fans that remained, and the game resumed 5 minutes later.

The swarm first appeared along the warning track. Later, fans were cleared out of several sections down the left-field line as the bees swarmed around the chair.

Head groundskeeper Luke Yoder thinks they were regular honey bees. Groundskeepers thought about putting a trash can over the chair, but didn't want to take the chance in case they were Africanized honey bees.

"It looked harmless, but let me tell you there was a big ball of bees under that jacket," Yoder said. "Every one of those bees you saw in the outfield, every single one of them went underneath that jacket."

Yoder said he's seen similar swarms at the downtown ballpark, some the size of a soccer ball, but just not during games.

The bees arrived more than 24 hours before Manny Ramirez makes his comeback from a 50-game suspension for violating baseball's drug policy, when the Los Angeles Dodgers open a three-game series against San Diego on Friday night.

"Definitely a first time for me," Houston manager Cecil Cooper said. "I didn't know what happened initially. I just saw the guy walking in. I didn't know exactly what he was doing. Then I started to see kind of the swarm after a while. You don't want to get anybody hurt. That's the main thing."

The Astros outscored the Padres 20-7 in taking three of four. It's the first time the Astros (38-39) have been one game under .500 since they were 1-2 on April 8.

San Diego has lost eight of nine games against Houston dating to last season.

Wandy Rodriguez (7-6) beat the Padres for the second time in as many starts this year, holding them to one run and seven hits in seven innings. He struck out five and walked two.

Blum, a former Padres player, gave the Astros a 6-0 lead when he homered to right on a 2-1 pitch with one out in the fifth, his second. Tejada opened the inning with a single and Lance Berkman - one of the "Killer Bs" along with the now-retired Jeff Bagwell and Craig Biggio - followed with a walk.

"It was a good series for us," Cooper said. "Everybody contributed for us. For the first day in a long time, we got a big, big hit to kind of break things open."

Blum also hit an RBI single in the first. Berkman scored three runs, had two doubles, two walks and an RBI.

The Padres loaded the bases on a single and consecutive walks with none out in the third and the heart of the order coming up, and failed to score. Adrian Gonzalez forced Kevin Correia at the plate and Kevin Kouzmanoff hit into a double play.

Correia (5-6) allowed six runs and eight hits in five innings. He struck out three and walked three.

With ace Jake Peavy and Chris Young both on the disabled list, Correia had been San Diego's most consistent starter. He was 4-1 in his previous five starts, with a 2.41 ERA and 29 strikeouts.

NOTES: Astros starters have posted a 2.13 ERA in the last 12 games, going 6-1 with five no-decisions.

Padres part-owner Aikman throws out first pitch

SAN DIEGO - Twenty-five years after drawing interest from the New York Mets coming out of high school, Hall of Fame quarterback Troy Aikman is dabbling in baseball again.

This time it's as a part owner of the San Diego Padres.

Wearing a Padres jersey with his familiar No. 8, the former Dallas Cowboys star threw out the ceremonial first pitch before Thursday's game against the Houston Astros. He bounced it in the dirt just in front of right-hander Chris Young, a Dallas native.

Aikman is an investor in the group headed by Jeff Moorad that has bought 35 percent of the Padres from John Moores and has five years to buy the rest. Moorad used to be partners with Aikman's agent, Leigh Steinberg.

"I've known Troy a long time, and I don't care what he says, but I guarantee he wasn't happy with the one bounce," Moorad said.

"I was hoping you'd miss it," Aikman cracked to reporters.

Growing up in Southern California, Aikman played both Little League and Pop Warner, but figured baseball would be his main sport.

When he was 12, Aikman's family moved to Oklahoma, "and over the next few years it was pretty clear that football was where the focus was in that part of the country and that was the route I was going to go," he said.

He had already signed a letter of intent to play football at Oklahoma but the Mets expressed an interest in drafting him as a catcher or outfielder during his senior year at Henryetta High, Aikman recalled.

The Mets kept calling and asking him how much money it was going to take for him to skip college and play ball.

"I was aware enough at that age that I wanted to say, years down the road, at 42, ‘Yeah, I got drafted by the Mets,'" Aikman said. "And so I kept holding off, holding off, and the night before draft, they called and said, ‘Look, we have to know what would it take to come to the Mets. We don't want to waste a pick.'

"I just threw out a figure, I said $200,000, and I had no idea what that really meant. And I was sure if they said OK, that I'd go. This guy on the other end of the line had this incredulous voice and just said, ‘What? Darryl Strawberry doesn't even make $200,000,' and he was the man at the time. I said, ‘Well, I'm going to make that if I'm going to go sign with the Mets.' And he said, ‘You have a good career at Oklahoma.' That that was kind of the end of it. I didn't go on and have a great career at Oklahoma but I was able to get out of there and got to UCLA as fast as I could."

Aikman went on to become the No. 1 pick overall in the 1989 NFL draft.

A six-time Pro Bowler, he passed for 32,942 yards and 165 touchdowns during his 12-year NFL career.

Aikman said he's made a "significant" investment in the Padres, but declined to give a figure.

The Padres began the day fourth in the NL West, nine games under .500 and 15 games behind the Los Angeles Dodgers.

"I don't want to say it's a work in progress, but I don't think anybody came into this thing without being realistic," he said. "It's going to take some time. As was the case in Arizona, I think everybody feels very confident that good things are about to happen."

He was referring to Moorad's previous stop in Arizona, where he helped turn around the Diamondbacks.

"He's a great partner in any business and I'm thrilled to have him part of the Padres," Moorad said about Aikman. "At the end of the day you can't surround yourself with too many winners."

-- Bernie Wilson

Report: MLB loans millions to Rangers owner

NEW YORK - Major League Baseball has loaned millions to Texas Rangers owner Tom Hicks, Yahoo! reported.

The league would not go into details about any borrowing, but said it was assisting Rangers owner Tom Hicks with the sale of the franchise.

"Tom is the control person, and there was no issue of making payroll," Bob DuPuy, baseball's chief operating officer, said Thursday. "Major League Baseball is working with the Rangers to sell the team, as Tom requested."

Hicks did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment.

Yahoo!, citing a major league source, first reported Thursday that a loan was made to Hicks Sports Group and that the amount was believed to be for less than $15 million.

The sport's central office routinely withholds $15 million to $20 million owed each team from central revenues and the sale of the Montreal Expos, and teams may borrow from that with the permission of commissioner Bud Selig.

A caller Wednesday to an XM radio station said the Rangers had failed to make payroll and had to get $15 million from Major League Baseball. The host, former Rangers manager Kevin Kennedy, said he knew something about the situation.

Reports of the radio broadcast were published by rangerfans.com, a Web site that follows the team.

Texas began the season with a payroll of $68.6 million, 22nd among the 30 big league teams.

It's not unprecedented for teams to borrow from MLB. In 1992, the Detroit Tigers borrowed about $5 million to make payroll one month.

Hicks said in May he was willing to sell controlling interest in the franchise. Earlier this year, Hicks Sports Group defaulted on $525 million in loans backed by the Rangers and the NHL's Dallas Stars, the other U.S. sports franchise Hicks owns.

Hicks bought the Rangers for $250 million in 1998. Last month, Forbes valued the franchise at $405 million, 15th among the 30 major league teams.

Two years ago, Hicks combined with Montreal Canadiens owner George Gillett Jr. to buy Liverpool of the English Premier League through a different entity, Kop Football (Holdings) Ltd. It has been negotiating to refinance 350 million pounds ($574 million) debt before a July 24 deadline.

Gillett agreed last month to sell the Canadiens, the Gillett Entertainment Centre and the Bell Centre.