Baby Giraffe Named In Honor Of Red Sox

Red Sox Nation has a new member – a bouncing baby giraffe.

Officials at the Franklin Park Zoo named a baby giraffe born after Game 1 of the World Series "Sox" on Monday in honor of Boston's four-game sweep of the Colorado Rockies.

The names "Red," "Fenway," "Champion," and "Boston" were among several proposed for the female giraffe, but Franklin Park Zoo staff settled for "Sox" because of her long, lanky legs, according to Zoo New England President and Chief Executive Officer John Linehan.

Sox weighed just over 150 pounds after birth and stands 6' 2" tall.

Zoo officials waited until now to name the baby giraffe because the staff did not want to jinx the series outcome for the Red Sox.

Sox is a member of the Maasai Giraffe subspecies, also known as Kilimanjaro Giraffe. They are the tallest land animals, using their unique long necks and tongues to reach vegetation inaccessible to other herbivores.

Members of the subspecies survive in the wild only in the sprawling plains Tanzania and Kenya, in East Africa.