Calling all Midges

Calling all Midges to pester the Red Sox
Monday, October 15, 2007
Michael Scott
Plain Dealer Reporter

Any chance we can bring those bugs back to Jacobs Field tonight?

Maybe they can do to Boston Red Sox starting pitcher Dice-K what they did to New York Yankees reliever Joba Chamberlain.

The American League Championship Series Game 3 battle against the Red Sox is the Indians' first home game since a stunning 2-1 victory over the Yankees on Oct. 5. That game will forever be remembered for the blinding, bothersome plague of Lake Erie insects that attacked and conquered the New Yorkers.

All of baseball America has been talking about it since.

The Associated Press referred to it as a "freakish invasion of gnats" - or the more clever "sacrifice flies."

The mosquito-like pests swarmed the brightly lit and unseasonably warm ballpark for only an inning or two and didn't bite, but they drove rookie pitcher Chamberlain nearly mad that night.

Who can forget the close-up shot of Chamberlain's chubby neck, crawling with dozens of the small, black bugs?

"I saw that shot on TV and said to my wife, 'Midges! There are midges swarming the field!' " said scientist Tom Nalepa, who studies the insects for the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory.

Nalepa and Joe Keiper of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History noted that the TNT television crew that night incorrectly referred to the bugs as "Canadian Soldiers," a common name for mayflies, which come off the lake earlier in the summer and have interrupted ballgames in other years.

Nope. Call these guys Indian Summer Soldiers.

The midges - which develop as pupae in the lake, hatch and then fly off to mate - covered a distracted Chamberlain in the eighth inning. The Yankees hurler uncorked two wild pitches, allowing the Indians to tie a game they later won in extra innings.

Afterward, Yankees star Alex Rodriguez said he has "never seen anything like it."

Tribe third baseman Casey Blake dryly characterized them as "small pterodactyls."

The next day, the New York Daily News blasted a one-word headline summary: "Insecticide!"

The AP also asked: "Where was the Sultan of Swat when the Yanks really needed him?"

The loss apparently is still bothering Yankees fans.

On the team's official Web site, one fan insists that "the Indians gave the Yanks the wrong stuff" to spray on the insects.

Another fan claims the "bugs were released from the Indians dugout" in the fatal eighth inning.

Could it happen again tonight? Will the bugs be back?

Experts say the attack on the Yankees was by a rare fourth hatching of midges in an especially warm week in October, but Nalepa the science guy said not to rule out another swarm.

"It might not be warm enough this time," he said, noting that the game-time forecast tonight is for temperatures near 60 degrees. "That doesn't mean there aren't a few left out there, though.

"But maybe we won't need them to beat Boston."

Maybe, but it couldn't hurt.