Las Vegas 51s bat dog Finn excites fans at Cashman Field
The energetic black labrador retriever darted out toward home plate, grabbed the wood bat between his teeth and trotted back toward the first-base dugout, wagging his tail as he ran.
He did this again and again one mid-July evening, eliciting squeals from the crowd at Cashman Field when he successfully retrieved the equipment.
Finn, a 4-year-old lab, fetched bats for the entire game. The 51s’ “bat dog” will appear at six more 51s games this season, with the next one coming on Aug. 4.
It’s the second year the 51s have had Finn out to the park — he came twice in 2016 — where he has quickly become a fan favorite.
“I had seen a few videos of bat dogs doing this stuff and I was just watching it and even the ones on the minor league teams, in my opinion, I just thought he was a lot more animated and energetic and I just thought he would be great for the crowd to see,” said Finn’s owner Fred Hassen.
Finn has been well trained by Hassen, the founder and CEO of Sit Means Sit, a dog-training company with franchises around the country.
He was linked up early last year with 51s’ director of sponsorships, James Jensen, through a mutual friend.
Hassen had been showing his friend a video of his dog “just goofing around.” His friend asked if Finn could do it in a game and Hassen said he didn’t know why he wouldn’t be able to.
Soon after, Hassen and Jensen were put in touch. Jensen said the two went out of lunch and talked about ways they could partner up. They then tried out a few dogs for the role.
“He worked with a couple different dogs and then we settled on Finn,” Jensen said. “He had the most speed, he had the best jaw strength to get around the bat and probably the most energetic-ness to come and be a part of it.”
Finn already had experience picking up different objects — cups, bottles, trash in a park — for movie and TV cameos, so soon they transferred that over to practicing with bats.
But none of the practicing could replicate a game environment, which can get distracting for a dog.
“The speed and the enthusiasm and all that stuff, some dogs have it and some dogs don’t,” Hassen. “This takes a lot of training for them to filter out all the crowd … and also the players throw the bats in various directions so there’s a lot of that to work through.”
If the bat is thrown in one place one time, the dog might be looking there before finding it in a completely different place. And with all the activity going on, Finn isn’t necessarily keeping both eyes on the bat. After all, there’s something else dogs more typically are used to running after.
“He’s following the ball, and then you have to turn around off all that action and send him for a bat that’s just sitting there,” Hassen said. “Believe me, he would love to pick up all the balls.”
During games, Hassen sits besides the 51s dugout and gives Finn commands. He has a whistle with him, too, in case it gets too loud for Finn to hear his voice.
At Finn’s first 51s game this year, he also carried a bucket with water bottles out to the home plate umpire, receiving pats on the head for a job well done.
“All the training we had, this wasn’t really going to be that big of a deal for him because the stuff that he’s doing, he’s running out a lot further and he’s picking up different things,” Hassen said. “He loves it.”
Contact Betsy Helfand at bhelfand@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BetsyHelfand on Twitter.
