Bark at the Park is always a fun promotion. While a dog might not fully appreciate the crack of the bat, the pop of the mitt or James Wood’s opposite-field power, they can perhaps enjoy a day outside and a little piece of sausage that fell on the ground. And if there’s anything a dog loves more than floor food, it’s a barrage of extremely loud, booming noises. The Washington Nationals were happy to accommodate.
Fireworks Night is another fun promotion. It is, however, uncommon and ill-advised for a baseball team to hold both promotions on the same night. This past Friday’s game in D.C. was a Pups in the Park night, allowing all kinds of pooches to witness Wood’s walk-off single in a 5-4 win over the New York Mets. As you can tell from the announcement/warning in the photo above, the dogs had exactly 20 minutes after the final out to clear the area before all hell broke loose.
Defector spoke to two fans who were at the Nationals game, one of whom provided the photo. Neither stayed for the fireworks, but they did clock a sizable number of dogs in attendance. The 20 minutes allotted wasn’t nearly enough for the dogs to get out of hearing range. A post on the Nationals subreddit described one owner’s experience:
Sure, it’s a Friday night game, so the stadium usually does fireworks after the game. But why do it on Pups in the Park night when they know that many dogs don’t do well with fireworks? The 20 minutes after the game wasn’t long enough time for me to get my dog far enough away from the stadium, so when the fireworks started, she freaked out.
And sure, you could say that it’s on us dog owners to plan for this ahead of time. But it just feels unnecessary to force fireworks in on a night like this when there’s way more home Friday games than PITP nights over the course of a full season.
Another fan at the game offered a similar account: “I left immediately after the game and was walking away from the stadium congestion when the fireworks started when a dog that freaked out and slipped its harness by me, right into an intersection and almost got hit by a car where I was waiting to cross.”
We’ve asked the Nationals for comment, but haven’t heard back. Somehow, this isn’t the first time this has happened at the MLB level. The Miami Marlins hosted the same combo in 2023, but only gave their dogs 15 minutes to flee the stadium.
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