Strange Days

IN PHOENIX nothing could distract Mets rookie righthander Alay Soler in his fourth major league start last Saturday--not even the injured pigeon that fell from the sky and landed in the infield as he warmed up for the seventh inning against the Diamondbacks. "I just saw a bird land behind the mound," said plate umpire Jim Reynolds, who scooped up the suffering squab and carried it off the field in his mask. "It looked like it had a broken wing." Soler went back to making the D-Backs look bird-brained: He pitched a complete-game two-hitter for his first big league shutout.

Soler was lucky. Six days earlier an errant seagull had cost Durham Bulls pitcher Jason Childers a strikeout. In a Triple A game against the Buffalo Bisons, a Childers offering hit a bird (right). For a while it seemed that the pitch was nevertheless a strike: The Bisons' Ramon Vazquez swung at it (the ball, not the bird) and missed for strike three. But after a conference the umpires ruled the play should have been ruled dead when the gull was hit and gave Vazquez another chance to hit. (He grounded out.) The bird? It wasn't ruled dead either; it was carried off the field and later flew away.

IN GERMANY the world's best soccer players got their first kicks at the +Teamgeist, the official World Cup ball (left). Engineered by Adidas, which has made World Cup balls since 1970, the +Teamgeist looks like your average soccer orb. But Adidas insists it's rounder than any of its predecessors--because its panels are glued together rather than stitched--and thus more aerodynamic and easier to sneak into the net. That's good news for FIFA, which wouldn't mind seeing more of the high-scoring games that fans love during the World Cup. International goalies agreed with Adidas that something was different. According to England's Paul Robinson, the +Teamgeist behaves "more like a water polo ball or volleyball" and "moves about all over the place."

IN CINCINNATI anyone brave enough to leave the house and head to River Downs racetrack on June 6--6/6/06, to paranoid numerologists--witnessed a Twilight Zone moment. Cinnamon Bay, the number 6 horse in the sixth race of the day, finished ... sixth. Fortunately the eerie result had few bettors deep-sixing their tickets. Cinnamon Bay (right) went off as a 30--1 long shot.