Strangest Reasons for a Sports Game Delay
Sports delays are usually pretty predictable. Rain, lightning, the occasional power outage.
But every once in a while, a game gets stopped for reasons so bizarre that they become the story everyone remembers instead of who actually won. These moments remind us that for all the planning, preparation, and multi-million dollar infrastructure, sports still happen in the real world where weird stuff occurs.
Here are some of the strangest delays in sports history.
Bees. So Many Bees.
Bee delays happen more often than you’d think, which is both funny and slightly terrifying. In 2016, a spring training game between the Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies got delayed because thousands of bees decided to set up camp on the netting behind home plate.
They had to call in a beekeeper (because apparently MLB teams have beekeepers on speed dial now, which is smart planning). But that’s not even the best bee story. During a 2019 Padres-Marlins game in San Diego, a massive swarm covered a microphone on the field, and the commentators had to narrate the bizarre scene of a beekeeper in full protective gear casually removing bees while professional athletes stood around looking nervous.
The game was delayed 48 minutes. Forty-eight minutes.
For bees. And it’s not just baseball—there have been delays in cricket, soccer, and tennis.
Bees don’t care about your sport, your schedule, or your ticket sales. They go where they want.
A Cat That Refused to Leave
The infamous “Rally Cat” incident during a 2017 Cardinals-Royals game wasn’t technically a delay (the cat ran onto the field during play), but there have been multiple games stopped because cats just wandered onto the field and decided they lived there now. Cats, unlike most animals that accidentally end up on sports fields, don’t run away when you chase them.
They sit down. They clean themselves.
They stare at you with total indifference while 40,000 people wait for someone to figure out how to remove a nine-pound animal that has absolutely no interest in cooperating.
The Solar Eclipse Game
On August 21, 2017, there was a total solar eclipse visible across parts of the United States, and several baseball games actually scheduled brief delays so that fans and players could watch. The Charleston RiverDogs (a minor league team) gave out eclipse glasses and paused their game during totality.
This is less “strange” and more “actually wholesome and cool,” but it’s still unusual to intentionally stop a professional sporting event so everyone can look at the sky for a few minutes. Sports and celestial events don’t usually coordinate schedules.
When the Lights Just…Die
Lights going out have caused some memorable delays, most famously the 2013 Super Bowl blackout at the Superdome in New Orleans. The game was delayed 34 minutes in the third quarter when half the stadium lost power, and nobody could figure out why.
It was the Super Bowl. Millions of people were watching.
And the lights just turned off. The 49ers had been getting demolished by the Ravens, but after the delay they mounted a comeback (they still lost, but the blackout definitely changed the game’s momentum).
Conspiracy theories immediately started—was it sabotage? A betting scheme? Beyoncé’s halftime show draining too much power? (It wasn’t, but that’s a fun theory.) Turns out it was just an electrical relay device that sensed an abnormality and shut down to protect the system, which is both reasonable and deeply anticlimactic.
Randy Johnson Exploding a Bird
This wasn’t technically a delay, but it should have been because everyone was too stunned to continue playing. In 2001, Randy Johnson threw a fastball that hit a bird mid-flight, literally exploding it in a cloud of feathers.
The orb was ruled dead (as was the bird), play continued after a brief shocked pause, and the moment became one of the most famous in baseball history. The odds of this happening are astronomical. Johnson was throwing nearly 100 mph, a bird happened to be flying at exactly the wrong place at the exact wrong millisecond, and the whole thing happened in front of cameras during spring training.
The universe occasionally has a dark sense of humor.
Alligator on the Field
In Florida (because of course it was Florida), a Lakeland Flying Tigers minor league game got delayed when an alligator wandered onto the field. Not a small one, either—this thing was reportedly five feet long, just hanging out near the outfield.
The players did what any reasonable person would do and stayed very far away while someone who gets paid to handle alligators came and removed it. Central Florida is basically a swamp with some cities built on top, so this is just one of those occupational hazards when you play baseball in gator territory.
Swarm of Flying Ants
During a 2019 Chicago Cubs game at Wrigley Field, a massive swarm of flying ants descended on the stadium during a warm summer evening. We’re not talking about a few bugs—this was a biblical plague situation, thousands of insects swarming the lights and covering players.
The game had to be stopped multiple times as players tried to deal with bugs crawling on them, flying in their faces, and generally making it impossible to play baseball. Jason Heyward was covered in ants. Javier Báez was picking them out of his hair.
The broadcast footage looks like something from a horror movie. Nature just decided that particular evening belonged to the ants, and humans could wait.
Drones
Drone interference is a modern problem that’s becoming increasingly common. A 2019 UEFA Europa League match between Qarabag and Eintracht Frankfurt got delayed when a drone carrying an Albanian flag flew over the stadium (this was politically motivated, long story involving regional tensions).
But there have also been cases where drones appear to just be operated by idiots who think it’ll be funny to fly their toy over a professional sporting event. Spoiler: it’s not funny, it’s a federal crime in most places, and you will get arrested.
But it does delay the game while security figures out where the drone is coming from and whether it’s a prank or something more serious.
Too Much Fog to See
Fog delays happen occasionally in outdoor sports, but the strangest was probably a 1988 NFL game between the Eagles and Bears in Chicago, which became known as the “Fog Bowl.” The fog was so thick that players couldn’t see more than 15-20 yards, the fans couldn’t see the field, and the TV cameras couldn’t capture anything useful.
They played anyway (somehow), and it was completely absurd. Quarterbacks were throwing blind. Receivers were running routes and disappearing into white nothingness.
The Bears won 20-12, but nobody watching had any idea what was happening. It looked like the game was being played inside a cloud, which technically it was.
Sprinklers Turning On Mid-Game
This has happened multiple times across various sports, but it never stops being funny (unless you’re a player or coach). The sprinkler system just activates while people are actively playing, drenching everyone.
There was a 2016 Inter Miami match where the sprinklers turned on in the middle of play. There have been multiple college football games interrupted by rogue sprinklers. In 2022, an Australian Football League game got stopped when sprinklers turned on during the match.
It’s always someone accidentally pressing the wrong button or a timer malfunction, and it’s always hilarious to everyone except the people getting soaked.
A Possum in the Stadium
A possum wandering onto the field during a 2021 Miami Marlins game became an instant folk hero when it evaded capture for several minutes, running around the outfield while grounds crew members chased it with a trash can. The possum was fast, surprisingly agile, and clearly had no respect for professional baseball.
Eventually they caught it (gently) and released it outside the stadium, but not before it had delayed the game and won the hearts of everyone watching. Someone created a Twitter account for the possum.
It was a whole thing. Sports fans will adopt literally any animal that interrupts a game.
Grasshopper Plague
The 2018 Giants-Royals game at Kauffman Stadium got swarmed by grasshoppers—millions of them, attracted by the stadium lights during a particularly heavy grasshopper season in Kansas City. Players were covered in bugs.
The field was covered in bugs. The cameras showed nothing but bugs. Unlike the flying ants situation, the game actually continued (somehow), though players were visibly disturbed by the constant assault of insects.
It wasn’t officially delayed, but it probably should have been because nobody was playing their best baseball while being attacked by grasshoppers. This is what you get for building cities in places where grasshoppers live in massive swarms.
Fire Alarm
Multiple sporting events have been delayed by fire alarms going off, sometimes due to actual smoke (someone burned popcorn, kitchen incident, etc.) but often just malfunctions. But the strangest was probably during a 2019 NHL game when a fire alarm went off at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto, and they had to evacuate everyone—players, fans, staff—into the streets of downtown Toronto in the middle of winter.
There was no fire. The alarm was triggered by an equipment malfunction. But fire codes are fire codes, so 20,000 people had to leave the building while firefighters checked everything, then everyone filed back in and resumed the game like nothing happened.
Just a casual 40-minute break to stand outside in Canadian winter.
Earthquake
A 2014 preseason NFL game between the 49ers and Raiders at Levi’s Stadium got delayed when a 6.0 magnitude earthquake hit the San Francisco Bay Area. The stadium shook.
People felt it. And play stopped while everyone assessed whether it was safe to continue (it was, structurally, though psychologically everyone was a bit rattled).
Earthquakes are common in California, but usually not during football games, and usually not strong enough that you have to stop and evaluate whether the stadium might collapse. The game resumed after about 15 minutes, though you have to imagine players were slightly distracted wondering if another tremor was coming.
When Weird Becomes Normal
The thing about strange delays is that they’re increasing. Climate change means more extreme weather events and unusual animal behavior patterns.
Drones are everywhere now. Our infrastructure is aging. Technology creates new ways for things to malfunction.
Maybe in twenty years, bee delays and possum interruptions will be so common that we won’t even notice them anymore (though hopefully we’ll notice the bees enough to do something about their declining populations, because that’s actually serious). But for now, these moments of cosmic absurdity breaking into carefully controlled professional sports are still strange enough to make us laugh, which is probably the healthiest response to the universe’s sense of humor anyway.
More from Go2Tutors!
- The Romanov Crown Jewels and Their Tragic Fate
- 13 Historical Mysteries That Science Still Can’t Solve
- Famous Hoaxes That Fooled the World for Years
- 15 Child Stars with Tragic Adult Lives
- 16 Famous Jewelry Pieces in History
Like Go2Tutors’s content? Follow us on MSN.
