Mound Visits: An eagle, a giraffe, and Ron Gardenhire walk into a bar ...

Welcome to this week’s Mound Visits, where you can catch up on all of the things you might have missed in baseball this week. In this post, we cover Ron Gardenhire wasting no time getting ejected, that whole eagle thing, and why someone didn’t cover themselves in Vaseline.

There’s a giraffe named Adrian Beltre in Texas, and Adrian Beltre finally met him. It was adorable, and the best type of addition to the Adrian Beltre Contains Multitudes catalogue. At least Giraffe Beltre doesn’t have to worry about people touching his head.

There’s the Beltre we know and love. Such antics, such lack of giving a shit about whether that’s completely against the rules or not. It worked though, so clearly Beltre’s instincts are foolproof.

The Tigers didn’t start their season until Friday thanks to some inclement weather that swept through the Midwest, but when they finally did break the seal on the 2018 season it was memorable. It ended 13-10 in the Pirates’ favor, but new Detroit manager Ron Gardenhire made sure that there were some fireworks before it was over.

In the bottom of the 10th, Nicholas Castellanos was originally called safe at home, which would have given the Tigers a 11-10 win to start their season. After a lengthy review, the call was overturned and the game went on. But not before Gardenhire made his feelings about the call more than apparent, eventually getting ejected.

He not only argued with the home plate umpire — which, Ron, buddy, he was the one who made the original safe call so he’s on your side — but anyone else who entered his general radius, resulting in the rare DOUBLE EJECTION. Two EMPHATIC gestures from both umpires. They weren’t half-assing this call, and Gardenhire was living for it.

The true money quote came after the game, when it was revealed Leonys Martin asked Gardenhire in the dugout “What happens if they change it? Are you going to kick dirt on home plate?” and the reply was “Damn right I am.” Would you expect anything less from someone who was ejected from more than 70 games as skipper of the Twins?

This week, Kevin Kiermaier almost covered himself in Vaseline to counter the cold in New York. But then he didn’t. And we don’t know any details about why he didn’t, except for one minute he was all for it and the next he no longer wanted any part of that with no real explanation why. The Great Vaseline Mystery of 2018.

When it comes to custom cleats or shoes, you usually see athletes sporting them more often in football or basketball where it’s not as likely that they’ll immediately get covered in dirt and grime. Baseball players have custom cleats of course, but often related to an event like Players Weekend or to honor the victims of tragedy as Harper did with his Vegas cleats last fall.

So Harper’s flashy Louis Vuitton/Supreme logo cleats — a pair of Under Armour Harper 2’s customized by Soles by Sir — were a pleasant surprise that brought some style to the diamond on the Nationals’ Opening Day.

And they immediately got dirty. Still looked pretty good with mud all over the logos though.

Y’all see that trained eagle land on Mariners’ pitcher James Paxton? He just wanted to be friends and talk about whether he resembles the eagle on the dollar or not, James. Chill. (In all seriousness, whether it was because he has ice in his veins or because he was petrified, he handled this about as well as anyone can.)

This isn’t the first time that Harper has posted an Instagram that included his dad, but it is the first time he’s done it since Mound Visits started so we’re including it.

Because Ron Harper is jacked. This isn’t new information, as Harper hangs out with his dad a lot, but we’re going to discuss it anyway because this is one of those things that requires periodic reminders for no real reason. This picture from a November Vegas Knights’ game is the most blatant display of the rocket launchers he calls arms, but it’s almost more impressive how ripped he looks in a suit. It takes a lot to look that muscular in a well-tailored suit but Ron Harper did it.

We’ll probably revisit this in the future, just because.

Before a game in Miami this week, Red Sox manager Alex Cora shared a nice little anecdote about playing PlayStation with The Rock when they were both at the University of Miami together back in the 90s. Except there’s only one problem: the Rock graduated in 1995 and the original PlayStation wasn’t available in North America until the following fall.

Did they have a secret hookup that imported one from Japan? Were they actually playing Sega and Cora just forgot which games belonged to what console? There’s been no solid answer to this mystery, so it’s probably easier to believe that Cora and The Rock ran an underground console network in the mid-90s while fronting as student athletes. As good a plot idea for the eventual 23 Jump Street as any.

Most people who live in the Northeast, Midwest, or Mid-Atlantic are far past the point where seeing snow makes them happy or fuzzy inside. It’s April, the snow refuses to stop, and everyone is slowly losing their confidence that spring is ever going to come at all. It’s like a twisted version of Narnia where, sure, it’s always winter, but there’s not even an evil witch to be angry at to pass the time or a half-man/half-goat that looks like James MacAvoy to pal around with while we wait for warmth.

In short, it sucks.

One thing that makes it suck less is watching snow baseball, which actually happens far less than it seems like it should and is always a pretty and surreal watch. You know who’s not sick of the snow? Fernando Rodney.

The Twins enjoyed the snow enough on Wednesday to take away the Pirates’ status as the last unbeaten team in the league, and it happened again when the Tigers played the White Sox in Chicago the next day.

Watching this fantastic Rodney GIF on a loop might add enough warmth to your heart to make it through one more snow storm. But only one more, you hear me nature? ONE MORE AND THAT’S IT.