The Coliseum, Opening Day, 2002 season. Sometime after Joe Satriani played the national anthem with the stadium PA turned off, but before the F-18 flew by at the wrong moment to scare the crap out of the crowd with its afterburners, a big hawk came flapping over the western lip of the stadium bowl, carrying a dead critter in its claws. The bird was clearly having difficulty with its heavy load, and lost altitude as it flew on a path roughly from the visiting bullpen to the left-field bleachers. When the hawk got close to the left-field wall, it realized it wasn't going to make it over the other side of the bowl, so it dropped the dead critter on the warning track and flew over Mount Davis.

The crowd went silent. Tejada crossed himself and the left fielder (was it Justice?) backed away in horror. A groundskeeper came out with a shovel and scooped up the critter. It seemed like an omen of some kind, but I've never heard of any baseball superstitions having to do with birds of prey dropping their lunch in the ballpark.

But... nobody else seems to remember this incident, even the people who were there with me at the time. Was this all a dream? A hallucination brought on by too many Coliseum Dogs? Does anyone remember this? If so, just what was that critter? I was in section 320, so I didn't have a good view of the critter.