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Watch: Haboob Sends Minor League Players Fleeing Off the Field

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A haboob — a giant dust storm that derives its name from the Arabic word for “blowing furiously” — is the closest most people will come to getting literally sandblasted while standing outdoors.

It’s the reason desert dwellers in the Middle East wear the clothing so familiar to Americans from all those Lawrence of Arabia and genie-from-the-lamp movies.

But giant dust storms aren’t just limited to the Arabian peninsula or the vast expanses of the Sahara in northern Africa, as some minor league baseball players in Arizona learned Monday.

Arizona’s summer monsoon season brings high winds of its own, and with the Mojave just waiting to be whipped up like the devil’s sandbox, havoc was wreaked.

Power got knocked out at Chase Field for the major league game between the Diamondbacks and Rangers, and apparently it also knocked out autocorrect’s common sense on the phone of ESPN’s Pedro Gomez.

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Having the word “haboob” corrected to “baboon” only made it funnier, as one can only imagine Rafiki from “The Lion King” deciding to turn into the newest member of Edward Abbey’s “Monkey Wrench Gang” at a power station.

The Diamondbacks and Gomez himself had some fun with the miscue.

Gomez suggested that the baboon had a “power arm,” the D-backs countered with seeing if they had the bananas in the budget to sign him, and then one Phoenix-area Suns fan went one better:

Because why a baboon when you could have the Suns Gorilla?

Meanwhile, back in the minor leagues, the Arizona League Short Season A affiliates of the Reds and Padres didn’t have a nice retractable-roof stadium in which to hide.

Donald Lutz, coaching the Reds, got an outdoor view of the baboon — er, haboob — at Goodyear Ballpark for all to see.

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ABC 15 Arizona’s Instagram account got a good shot of the effects of nature’s sandblaster in action:

And lest anyone dismiss the fury of these storms, just look what the wind did to this palm tree.

Some days, you just want to play MLB The Show and you end up dropped into a game of Spec Ops: The Line.

Thankfully things calmed down eventually and nobody appeared to be seriously hurt.

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Boston born and raised, Fox has been writing about sports since 2011. He covered ESPN Friday Night Fights shows for The Boxing Tribune before shifting focus and launching Pace and Space, the home of "Smart NBA Talk for Smart NBA Fans", in 2015. He can often be found advocating for various NBA teams to pack up and move to his adopted hometown of Seattle.
Boston born and raised, Fox has been writing about sports since 2011. He covered ESPN Friday Night Fights shows for The Boxing Tribune before shifting focus and launching Pace and Space, the home of "Smart NBA Talk for Smart NBA Fans", in 2015. He can often be found advocating for various NBA teams to pack up and move to his adopted hometown of Seattle.
Birthplace
Boston, Massachusetts
Education
Bachelor of Science in Accounting from University of Nevada-Reno
Location
Seattle, Washington
Languages Spoken
English
Topics of Expertise
Sports




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