19
2009
A Word On Rain Delays
An article by Former Writers
The New York Yankees were scheduled to play the Washington National this afternoon up at New Yankee Stadium. First pitch was schedule for 1:05pm, New York time. It rained most of the day in the greater New York area. It rained so bad in fact the the U.S. Open at Bethpage was postponed for today. When I got home from work at about 5:15 this afternoon, I saw that the Yankee game was still in rain delay. The game which was scheduled to start at 1:05 this afternoon did not begin until 6:30 tonight. A rain delay in excess of 5 1/2 hours!
You could hardly blame the Yankees for waiting this out. After all if you have the most expensive team in the history of baseball, playing at team that’s on a pace to win as many games as the 1962 Mets, why not wait it out?
The problem I have with this is, what about the fans? Is it fair to the paying customers to make them wait in excess of five hours for the game to start? What does a fan do, sitting in New Yankee Stadium for over five hours? Most fans would need a bank loan just to keep eating and drinking for that long. How is fair to the fan who doesn’t want to risk illness, or has other plans for the day?
I don’t mean to single out the Yankees here. I’ve watched, or waited to watch a few games this season where the rain delays have seemed to go on forever, totally disregarding the fans. If you’re a fan and you have to spend in excess of eight hours at the ballpark, and then factor in travel time to and from the stadium, how can that possibly be an enjoyable day out?
MLB needs to wake up a bit. As I understand it, before a pitch is thrown its the choice of the home team whether or not to start the game. Once the first pitch is thrown the game is in the hands of the umpiring crew. At some point in the process MLB needs to get involved. Maybe after a delay of say three hours, MLB gets to make the decision if the game is played or not. Its ridiculous to expect people to spend in excess of eight hours, in bad weather at the ballpark.
As a final note, Nats beat the Yankees, 3-0.
About the Author: Former Writers
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I don’t like to defend the Yankees, but note these:
1) there is no common off day that they could come to NY and make the game up. not even the chance of finding some time when the Nats come back to Shea later in the year.
2) you can’t say that the Yankees are losing the gate because they ended up allowing ANY ticket holder to come into the cheap cheap tickets for free or half price at anything else non-suite in a non-premium game (something to that effect).
I do think they should have folded early on and said come back October 5 if necessary before the playoffs.
At least the Yankees had the presence of mind to allow fans to move down into the expensive seats. They also offered them tickets to a future game in 2009 or 2010. That being said, this is a problem with interleague play. Other than the rivalry series, such as Mets-Yankees, other teams visiting ballparks from the other league only get one series per year. Therefore, if there is a rain delay in the last game of the series, MLB has to wait it out or else they could force a scheduling fiasco where one team is forced to make a difficult trip to make up one game. At least in a non-interleague league, you could always make it up with a doubleheader the next time a team visits that city.
Hmmm, interleague problems forced by rain delays. That sounds like a future blog to me. I’ll get right to it!
Ed, there’s one or two things to consider. Except for divisional rivals, it’s rare (once per season) that a team makes more than 1 trip to your stadium, so it’s not really an interleague problem in most cases. And in interleague, most teams come to visit you once every 6 years. In general, if baseball weren’t so greedy about getting the game in and keeping fans in the stadium to eat, drink, and be merry, they’d have so many more rainouts, and you know not every fan likes the compensation that they get for either sitting through the mess or NOT sitting through it and missing a game.
I think rain delays shouldn’t last more than an hour. After that it’s obvious the rain is going to be a problem.