Golfer Charged with Cruelty to Animals

Filed in archive Golf News on March 7, 2008

Courtesy: WireImage

When Dave Winfield was with the new york yankees (not long before he was traded to the Toronto Blue Jays), he accidentally killed a seagull on the field of the old Exhibition Stadium where the Blue Jays used to play their home games.

Winfield had thrown the ball in from the outfield and, as it sailed towards the bat boy, it struck and killed a flying seagull.



Winfield was arrested following the game and charged with cruelty to animals. The charge was dropped when common sense prevailed and it was seen as clearly an accident. If you've ever been to Toronto, you will know that seagulls are everywhere, given the close proximity of Lake Ontario.

While Winfield's toss was too accurate at the wrong time ("it's the first time he's hit the cut-off man", whined manager Billy Martin), the actions of Tripp Eisenhour are decidedly different.

Last December, while shooting a TV show in Florida, Eisenhour struck and killed a red hawk. On Wednesday, he was charged with cruelty to animals and killing a migratory bird.

Eisenhour has apologized and has used the Winfield argument; it was an accident, says Eisenhour who is playing the Nationwide Tour this year. "I was trying to simply scare it into flying away".

Not so, say witnesses working on the shoot and right there at the scene.

The bird had been squawking some 300 yards away as tape was rolling, forcing the crew and Eisenhour to do it all again.

The golfer became angry, say those who were present, jumped into his golf cart, drove closer to the bird and began to hit golf balls at it. As each ball drew closer, Eisenhour would whoop with glee, according to the witnesses.

Finally one ball he drove at the bird did the trick. It fell dead, bleeding from both nostrils.

The sound engineer on the shoot said hitting the bird was a joke to Eisenhour. Yet, says the sound man, no one in the crew stepped in before it was too late.

What do we make of this? First, this is far different from the Dave Winfield incident; Eisenhour was intentionally trying to influence the bird's behavior without thinking about the consequences of hitting it.

And it appears that he grew more and more excited by what had become a game as each ball drew nearer its target.

With each ball struck, Eisenhour could have made a different choice and simply stopped what he was doing. He didn't, a living thing was killed and there was no reason for it.

The death of one red hawk in Florida may seem insignificant when we are constantly killing each other in various places around the world.

But it's one further indication of how removed and disconnected humans have become from the natural world. And how failing to choose a different action resulted in the unnecessary death of an innocent creature - a lesson that can be applied again and again in the daily affairs of man.

Many may disagree but so say I.