Larry Brown Sports

The Texas Rangers held their annual “Bark in the Park” event at the Ballpark in Arlington on Thursday night, where fans can dress their dogs in Rangers gear and show them off during pregame warmups. The owners of the five dogs that are deemed to be the best dressed win a prize. Regardless of who won the competition, there was no debating who the most committed pooch was.

As you can see from the photo above that Jimmy Traina shared with us, at least one dog stuck it out until the bitter end on a cold night in Texas. The game-time temperature was 44 degrees with a wind of 12 mph, so it couldn’t have been fun to sit in the stands for nine innings. That didn’t matter to this boss, who simply wrapped himself in a blanket and watched the Rangers come up short in the ninth and lose 3-1 to the White Sox.

Would I have stayed until the end? I honestly can’t say for sure, but it’s obvious I’m never going to be as much of a committed fan as this dude. That’s something most of us will have to learn to live with.

The first round of any PGA tournament is typically a stress-free zone. Players are trying to get a feel for the course while simply remaining in close enough contention to make the cut on Friday. But tensions can run a little high when alligators start walking across the fairway — especially ones with three legs.

As you can see from the video above, a three-legged alligator walked across the course on Thursday at the Zurich Classic in Avondale, Louisiana. It was one of several gators that decided to come up for some sun while the players were trudging along. Here are a couple of photos from the scene that looked like it was straight out of one of those low-budget horror movies.

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I’m not sure why I wrote “cute” in the headline, since “cute” and “sea otter” are synonymous, but I just wanted to make sure you watched this. In the video is Eddie, a 16-year-old sea otter who lives at the Oregon Zoo. Eddie has arthritis in his elbows, so his caretakers taught him to play basketball to help with his condition. The little guy gets tossed a toy basketball and then dunks it into a hoop that has a Portland Trailblazers backboard. It’s about the most adorable thing you could imagine.

H/T The Big Lead

Swedish golfer Daniela Holmqvist had an incredibly frightening experience earlier this week at the pre-qualifier for the SPS Handa Australian Open in Australia, the LPGA’s season-opening event. According to Golf Digest Woman, Holmqvist was punching through the rough on the fourth hole when she felt a stinging pain in her ankle. She reached down and swatted way a black, furry creature that had a red dot on its back before hunching over in pain.

The furry creature turned out to be a black widow spider, and it had bitten Holmqvist on the ankle.

“When I told the local caddies in my group what had happened, they got very upset and said it was a black widow, and immediately started looking for their phones to call the medics,” she told Swedish website Svensk Golf.

Holmqvist’s leg began to swell and hurt badly, and she said she remembered being told as a child that a bite from a black widow spider can kill a person within 30 minutes. Rather than panicking, Holmqvist used a golf tee to open the wound where the spider had bitten her and squeezed the venom out.

“A clear fluid came out,” she said. “It wasn’t the prettiest thing I’ve ever done, but I had to get as much of it out of me as possible.”

Amazingly, Holmqvist finished her round. Medics followed her around for the final 14 holes, but the procedure she had performed on herself apparently worked. She shot a 74 and missed the tournament cut, but I’m sure she’s thankful to have avoided serious injury.

Golf may not be the most dangerous sport going, but the environment in which it is played can create some hairy situations. Whether it’s a senior citizen being dragged by an alligator, a live shark turning up out of nowhere or a black widow sneak attack, mother nature can make golf a dangerous game.

H/T Eye on Golf

Using a cell phone while on a golf course is typically frowned upon. The Okeeheelee Golf Course in Palm Beach County is lucky enough to have a raccoon on staff to help keep golfers from spending time on their smart phones and screwing up the rate of play. That’s right — a raccoon.

According to the South Florida Sun Sentinel, a golfer named Brian Acker recently had his iPhone 4 stolen while playing on the second hole of the Eagle Course at Okeeheelee. The device was taken by a raccoon that course workers and regulars call Rocky. He is known for snatching various items from unsuspecting players such as wallets and food, but the way Acker recovered his cell phone makes the story even more entertaining.

Because of a GPS app, Acker was able to “ping” his phone and trace it to the top of a palm tree on the second hole of the course. Workers used a ladder to climb the tree and found Acker’s cell phone case before snagging the phone itself about 12 feet up the tree. It was accompanied by several food wrappers.

“He has a taste for open food items left in golf carts and shiny items,” Okeeheelee General Manager Mac Hood explained. “The raccoon just saw something he liked and he went in there and grabbed it.”

Acker said the incident will not discourage him from returning to the course, but it will make him rethink bringing his cell phone along.

“I’ll be back,” he said. “This time I will leave my cellphone in the car.”

As we’ve learned over the years here at LBS, animals causing problems on golf courses doesn’t just happen in movies like “Caddyshack.” Whether it’s a live shark on the course or an alligator nearly killing a golfer, problems with creatures and critters aren’t tough to come by.

H/T Eye on Golf

Colin Kaepernick has one of the most unique pets you will ever see. If you ask me, the thing is awesome. While most people who want an enormous pet might convince their parents to buy them a Great Dane or a St. Bernard, Colin talked his parents into letting him get a tortoise when he was 10 years old. He named it Sammy.

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Here’s something straight out of the abnormal: a live shark was found on a golf course in California on Monday.

The photo above is of a two-foot-long shark that showed up on the 12th hole tee box at the San Juan Hills Golf Club course in San Juan Capistrano.

San Juan Hills Golf Club spokesman Melissa McCormack tells Larry Brown Sports that one of the course’s attendants, Bryan Stiver, came across the shark on the 12th hole. She says he saw it wiggling around, so he picked it up and threw it in the back of his cart and took it back to the clubhouse.

The Capistrano Dispatch reported that Stiver briefly kept the shark in a bucket of water, to which he added some salt. He later took the shark to Dana Point and released it into the water where it swam away, leading them to believe it was still alive.

Though some golfers were on the green, McCormack told LBS that Stiver was the only one who saw the shark before it was taken away.

McCormack has an interesting theory to explain how the shark got there. She believes that a bird must have plucked the shark from the ocean and dropped it on the course. She bases that explanation on the punctures the shark had by its dorsal fin, and the course’s proximity to the ocean (it’s less than four miles away).

McCormack believes the shark was a leopard shark, which are found along the Pacific coast from Mexico to as far north as Oregon.

We’ve seen other examples of animals by golf courses, but this has to be the craziest. Actually, this one still might take the cake.

Luckily nobody was hurt and the shark appeared to be saved.

H/T NBC LA