Superman has Krypto; Batman has Ace the Bat Hound. That’s not a joke… Ace was used to help find his owner, who’d been kidnapped; but because Bruce Wayne had already placed “lost dog” ads around town (many of them… being a billionaire makes hiring someone to staple up flyers fairly easy) he needed to keep Ace’s identity hidden. Batman rigged up a cowl for the dog, and after his owner had to give him up, Batman adopted him and took him as an occasional crime-fighting partner alongside Robin.
This isn’t about fiction, though. This is about real life dogs who have taken over one of the traditional positions in baseball, the bat boy.
The most famous of these work for the minor league team the Trenton Thunder. The current bat dog is Rookie, who has retrieved used bats and returned them to the bullpen since 2017. Before them, his father Derby held the position starting in 2010; and before that his grandfather Chase was the bat dog starting in 2002.
ESPN produced a video about them.
Since the Thunder gave the dogs a job, appreciation and no small level of fame, some other minor league teams have followed their lead. There’s been Deuce, from the Myrtle Beach Pelicans; Miss Babe Ruth and Miss Lou Lou Gehrig from the Greensboro Grasshoppers, and the Diamond Dogs (the latest is Jake) who have performed shows (including bat recovery) for a variety of minor league parks throughout the country.
The one common trait? They’re all Retrievers, of course.
Question of the night: If you had to pick only one type of animal for a pet, what would it be?
