Chills purl down the spines of spectators in the crowd at the Great American Ball Park as patriotic tones of “The Star Spangled Banner” echo from a giant boom box, causing tears to well out of the eyes of both Orioles and Reds fans uniformly.
Sam the bald eagle idles high in his crate.
The cage opens.
A bird whistle signals, and the eagle swoops down from above the crowd in center outfield and soars—as readily through the swollen hearts of fans whose many thousand watered eyes follow him, as to his trainer, Eddie Annal, who stands far off, a dot on the mound.
Sam was a pregame hallmark.
But early May marked his final pregame flight.
Hundreds of flights like this one live in cherished places for fans who stood in these bleachers as boys in the early 2000s. Now 20 years have passed since Sam the Eagle first flew. Those boys are men and fathers, and recently, another fact came to light. Sam got older too.
Eagle-eyed Sam had been able to spot his tiny trainer in center field from atop the bleachers since his first practice at the ballpark in September 2003. He had sat perched high up for five minutes before figuring out he had to glide down to Mr. Annal like a big, feathery paper airplane.
That’s impressive given Sam’s injured wing.
Just a months-old eaglet, injured and found on the side of the road, was how Sam started out. It was 1999 and he was rehabilitated at Michigan State University. His wing injury proved permanent, meaning that Sam could not be released back into the wild.
“We brought him to Cincinnati in the spring of 2003 and started working with him,“ Mr. Annal said in a press release in June 2024. ”He had never been on a glove and we had no idea what his flight ability would be.”
But Sam’s trainers soon saw him soar.
Sam flourished and became a hallmark of the pregame at the Ball Park and beyond. And the rest is history.
“I was in the stadium a lot for these flights and can tell you that there were tears and applause and amazement when Sam reached the mound,” officials from Sam’s home at Cincinnati Zoo told The Epoch Times. “The moment when Eddie started blowing his whistle during the National Anthem was so exciting. It signaled that it was time for Sam to fly—magical.”
“Vision is so important to eagles,” Mr. Annal said.
On the Monday before his retirement in June, Sam’s eyesight slipped while practicing.
“During practice, which we always do a couple days before a game flight, he missed landing on the glove badly, and his behavior was very abnormal,” Mr. Annal told the newspaper. “We had the vet staff look at him as soon as we got back from the ballpark, and they found the cataracts in both eyes upon a quick eye examination.”
No more would Sam fly over the heads of fans at the Great American Ball Park. But his days of inspiring hearts at the stadium were not done. Sam was walked onto the field perched proudly on Mr. Annal’s arm for the national anthem during a late June Reds game against the Pirates.
On his trainer’s arm he was perched, and he stayed perched.
Sam will play along if he chooses to.
Sam may now be retired, but the bond between the eagle and trainer is still going strong. Twenty years of trust and respect built working with Mr. Annal has made an impression on the bald eagle.
“Sam definitely recognizes the difference between trainers, and Eddie has been there from the beginning of Sam’s training,” zoo officials told The Epoch Times. “Sam trusts Eddie to put him in safe situations and have good snacks for him. Eddie trusts Sam to not grab him with his talons.”
