CLEVELAND — Call them the 10th man for the Indians. And the 11th, 12th . . . maybe even the 10,000th. A swarm of bugs descended upon players at Friday's playoff game against the New York Yankees, driving a few to distraction. Joe Keiper, the Cleveland Museum of Natural History's bug expert suspects they were midges.
"That's my best guess without going out there with a bugnet," said Keiper after watching television footage of bugs camping out on Yankee hurler Joba Chamberlain's neck.
But fans and the Indians didn't seem as bugged as the Yankees. "People here didn't have a problem with the blizzard," said Ron Wittreich of Eastlake, recalling a snowstorm that cut short April's home opener. "We definitely don't have a problem with the bugs, but the Yankees do." \
The harmless bugs, which don't bite or carry diseases, live in Lake Erie as larvae and pupae and fly off in search of a mate as soon as they become adults. The infestation was blamed on an unusually warm and humid October evening on the shores of Lake Erie.
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Source: Cleveland.com