PHOENIX—The Arizona Diamondbacks organization apologized to fans, their families, and the community at large Thursday after more than 16,000 people attending the previous night's game were killed by the poisonous Western diamondback rattlesnakes given out as part of Complimentary Rattlesnake Night.
"I feel terrible," Diamondbacks general manager Jerry Dipoto told reporters as emergency personnel working out of temporary triage stations around Chase Field injected antivenom into the estimated 23,000 victims who survived the initial wave of snakebites. "All we wanted to do was give people something that was symbolic of the Diamondbacks, something they could take home and keep to remember the team by."
"I don't think they'll be taking their rattlesnakes home after this, though," Dipoto said. "They probably won't want them now that all those people are dead."