Last month, Layla, the Class-A Clearwater Threshers’ hitting dog, retired after six years of retrieving bats from home plate.
On Friday, the Philadelphia Phillies affiliate introduced its new Bat Dog Lucy May. She happens to be Layla’s little sister.
It was also Beach Night, where the Clearwater Threshers become the Clearwater Beach Dogs. In fact, dogs are allowed in the ballpark on Fridays, so Lucy May had some of Layla’s old four-legged fans at the ballpark.
For her debut, a member of the Threshers organization threw a bat onto the field for Lucy May to pick up and begin her new profession. Easy job, right?
Well, she had another idea. She left the bat and ran around the infield while the Threshers warmed up. She sat down on the grass in front of second base and, well, nature called.
When she was done, she continued running around and came across one of the groundskeepers who was searching the dirt in the infield for a petting zoo.
Luckily, Layla is still around to mentor her little sister. She was there to pass the torch, so to speak.
Layla was honored last month when she played her final game. At 13 years old, her owner Andrew Davis said it was time for Layla to retire.
To mark her retirement, the Threshers gave Layla a bone-shaped baseball cake with the words “Happy retirement, Layla” engraved on it and even showed a recap of some of her best retrieves on the stadium’s big screen.
Davis and his dogs came to this performance quite by chance.
As he Tampa Bay Times Before Layla retired, he showed her how to get him a beer from his fridge. Impressed, he sent a clip of the video to the Threshers. Not long after, he received a response with a request.
“They finally got back to me,” Davis said. “And they said, ‘That’s a really cool trick. Do you think your dog could retrieve bats?'”
He said it only took a few weeks to teach Layla how to pick up the bat and return it to the dugout.
After Layla quit, Lucy May went into the “minor league,” as Robert Stretch, Threshers’ community engagement and media manager, put it.
It looks like Lucy May will need some more time before she is called up again.
Clearwater continues its series with Dunedin on Saturday.