Case of the Fouled Fowl

The perpetrator: a hulking 6-ft. 6-in., 220-lb. Minnesotan, now working in New York City, and last seen in pinstripe knickers. His victim: a frail denizen of Toronto, covered with feathers. The weapon: a spheroid mass of hide, cork and yarn flung carelessly, at perhaps 70 m.p.h. So the charge sheet might have read last week on New York Yankee Centerfielder Dave Winfield after his arrest in Toronto for fatally beanballing a herring gull.

The encounter between bird, ball and ballplayer took place before 36,684 paying witnesses in Toronto's Exhibition Stadium, between halves of the fifth inning of a Yankee-Blue Jay game. Winfield had just finished his warmup tosses when he turned and whipped the ball to a ball boy. It hit the hapless gull, which had been idly perched on the turf. A ball boy came out, shrouded the corpse in a towel and tenderly removed it. For Winfield, who spent the rest of the game ducking balls and junk thrown by jeering fans, it marked the ignominious end to an evening of uneven achievements: one single, one double, one seagull.

At the end of the game, which the visiting Yankees won 3-1, police arrested Winfield in the dressing room on charges of "willfully causing unnecessary cruelty to animals." The possible penalty: a fine of up to $500 or six months in jail. Yankee Manager Billy Martin, loser of a dispute involving a home run hit by George Brett's now famous pine-tarred bat, felt that his star was getting a bad rap. "They say Winfield hit the gull on purpose," said Martin. "They wouldn't say that if they could see the throws he's been making all year."

Booked and released after posting a $500 bond, Winfield was suitably remorseful. "It is quite unfortunate," he said, "that a fowl of Canada is no longer with us." Nor is the case. After thinking it over, Toronto police dropped the charge. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.