The phrase outer space has been around since 1842, but I’ve always thought that it’s a strange one. Space is the catchall word we use for any empty area. It’s a little bit silly that someone looked up at the unknowable vastness of the universe and decided to refer to it in the same way you’d describe a spare bedroom to a friend who needs a place to crash. Either way, there’s plenty of space out there. There’s space between planets and space between galaxies. Cosmic voids, the vast empty spaces between gravitationally linked galaxies, make up more than 80% of the universe.
Saturday was Space Night at LECOM Park in Bradenton, Florida. While Paul Skenes was dazzling a packed house in Pittsburgh, the Bradenton Marauders, the Pirates’ Low-A affiliate, held a stargazing session after the game and played “Space Oddity,” “Man in the Moon,” and “Mr. Spaceman” over the PA between innings. Staff members wore NASA flight suits. On the field, the Marauders overcame a two-run deficit to beat the Port St. Lucie Mets, 4-3, extending their winning streak to nine games. Also on the field: a turtle. In the top of the second inning, with a 1-2 count on leadoff batter Yohairo Cuevas, the home plate umpire called time out and turned his head toward left field. It took a while for the rest of the heads in the park to follow, but when they did, they were rewarded with a show. A turtle roughly the size of home plate walked into left field as a defensive replacement. The human outfielders wanted no part it. Center fielder Sergio Campana gently pushed his teammates toward the turtle, and as they cautiously approached it, the turtle started hauling shell toward center field. Left fielder Esmerlyn Valdez waved to the bullpen for help. Eventually, reliever Magdiel Cotto jogged out, hoisted the creature from behind, and hauled it back to the bullpen. The whole saga lasted just over a minute, or as Reptiles Magazine put it, “Turtle’s Minor League Debut Short-Lived.”
I want to make it clear up front that I don’t necessarily see anything wrong with a turtle on the field. As I understand it, there’s nothing in the rules that says a turtle can’t play baseball. However, if I’m being totally honest, I don’t really think turtles are suited for the outfield. Not only do they possess the foot speed and body type for catcher, they’re already wearing most of the gear. Just ask Willians Astudillo, famously nicknamed “La Tortuga,” who has spent the plurality of his professional career as a catcher. Turtles are no strangers to baseball. They’ve been part of the fabric of the game for a long, long time, going all the way back to 1907 with “Turtle Tom” McCullough of the Memphis Turtles and continuing to minor league teams like the Beloit Snappers, Daytona Tortugas, and Pulaski River Turtles: Turtles are no strangers to space either. In September 1968, three months before Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders became the first humans to orbit the moon aboard Apollo 8, two Russian tortoises beat them there. They traveled around the moon on a Zond 5 spacecraft with a mannequin in the pilot’s seat, becoming the first earthlings in deep space, before returning safely to Earth. Turtles and tortoises would return to space on several other missions.
Several coincidences drew me to this story. For starters, I’ve played ball in Bradenton. During my junior and senior years of high school, the varsity team spent spring break there. It was a dream. We got to stay in a hotel for a week, doing nothing but playing baseball on nice fields in nice weather. My senior year, a few of my teammates snuck out of the hotel after curfew one night, found a Florida Man willing to buy them beer and cigarettes, and drunkenly decided to use the cigarettes to brand each other. I don’t recall exactly how they got caught, but the fresh burns on their biceps can’t have helped. My friend Matt and I stayed in the hotel and played Nintendo, though I believe we also ended up getting in trouble for knowing about the excursion and failing to alert the proper authorities.
In order to learn more about the trespasses of this particular turtle, I went looking for help. I reached out to several professors of herpetology, along with the Turtle Conservancy, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, and Greg Turtletaub, who played in the Mets system in 1987 and 1988. I heard back from four experts, all of whom identified the substitute left fielder as a Florida softshell turtle. “Given how flat and fast it was, along with the locality in Florida, that’s the only species of turtle it could be,” explained Coleman M. Sheehy, Ph.D., a herpetologist at the Florida Museum of Natural History. “We were talking about it in the front office,” said Thomas Zinzarella, Bradenton’s play-by-play announcer. “How does the turtle get out there? It might’ve squeezed through one of the outfield walls or something. Maybe its home is that pond back behind the wall. So maybe that’s how it got in, left from there and starting crawling.” Dr. Sheehy agreed with that theory, explaining that the turtle’s “flat, slippery, and flexible shell” likely allowed it to squeeze under a fence. Dr. Steve A. Johnson, of the University of Florida, had an explanation for why the turtle decided to enter the field. “I’m not certain,” he wrote, “but I think there is a good chance it was a female looking for a sunny area to nest that happened to wander into the outfield of the stadium.” To the turtle, the wide, empty outfield must have looked like the perfect cosmic void.
Cotto, the reliever who removed the turtle from the field, is off to an excellent start this season. Over 12 appearances, he’s running a 2.11 ERA, and he’s saved two games and one turtle. He told me that once Valdez started signaling to the bullpen for help, “There was definitely a mini-council. Like, alright, who’s going to get it?” No one volunteered at first. “Everybody looks at each other and they’re like, ‘Someone’s gotta go get it.’ I’m like, ‘Move out of the way. I’ll go get it.’ I invited Cotto to throw his teammates under the bus and name the players who refused, but he said, “Honestly, there wasn’t anybody that was a ‘no.’ I think everybody was just more fascinated. Whereas I was like, I just want to go look at it up close and touch it.” When I asked what it felt like, his answer sounded like it had been honed over several retellings in the last week. “Yeah, so the sides are slimy and leathery, almost like a lily pad. And then closer to the center it gets a little harder. I’d say, like hard cardboard or something. I don’t really know. It was just harder than the outside. So the outside was definitely like leather. It was definitely a softshell.” As you may have guessed, Cotto knows his way around a turtle. “I had two pet turtles when I was younger,” he told me. “Obviously not quite as big as the one I picked up. I’ve had my fair share of time handling turtles.” That’s why he knew to hold the turtle away from his body, to avoid both fluids and bodily harm. “I didn’t want that guy to bite me,” he said. Elaine Davis, president of the Calusa Herpetological Society, explained that Cotto was right to handle the turtle with care. Florida softshells are known for their aggressiveness. “They have a fairly long neck and can reach back and bite,” she wrote, pointing out that the turtle’s scientific name is Apaline ferox.
I couldn’t help taking a detour to ask Cotto the names of his pet turtles. “Oh my goodness,” he said. “I know one of my turtle’s names was Rosebud.” When I started laughing, he continued, “Yeah, I’m serious. That was the first turtle we had, Rosebud. She was a sweet little box…
