Royals shortstop Nicky Lopez’s proposal for Major League Baseball involves dogs
Royals shortstop Nicky Lopez just might be the only player in the history of baseball to have played fetch with a dog during a game.
It happened while Lopez was playing for Double-A Northwest Arkansas in 2018. A dog at a “Bark at the Park” event ran on the field while he was warming up for an inning, and a game of fetch took place.
Lopez is a big dog lover and he spoke about that on the “Flipping Bats” podcast. The subject came up against when the show’s host, Ben Verlander, asked Lopez if he was commissioner for a day what rule would he put in or take out for the betterment of the game.
“I’m gonna go the fun route though,” Lopez said. “And you know me with dogs, I think it should be necessary for each team to have a dog in their clubhouse. So I was saying this to I think it was Whit (Merrifield) or one of my other teammates is that this dog doesn’t know if you went Oh for 4 or you went 4 for 4, it’s still gonna love you. And I think what baseball needs is a little something to decompress.”
Lopez, who is batting .304 with 20 stolen bases, played in the minor leagues for four seasons and has one regret.
“I always get jealous because I see those bat dogs you know the ones that run literally on the field to pick up the bat,” Lopez said. “I’ve never played against a team that had that, so that’d be cool.”
Lopez said he’d welcome dogs in the dugout as well, as he talked about man’s best friend with Verlander in this clip:
What do you think of this idea?
This story was originally published September 22, 2021 at 11:30 AM.
