Writing the Pine

I waited outside in the rain for well over an hour hoping to catch my hour and half long bus ride home.  It was late and the rain that started off as a drizzle quickly became a trickle which gave way to a downpour.

I thought about the forty-some-odd-thousand fans that sat in their seats in the new Yankee Stadium that were wondering the same thing I was:  “I wish I had something covering me from the rain.”

What boggles my mind is how you spend thousands of man hours planning and designing a modern day stadium, over a billion dollars (some of which were tax-free municipal bonds), and three years building something that doesn’t have a retractable roof.

The baseball purists cry foul about the sanctity of the sport.  “Rain delays and cancellations are part of the game,” they shout from the rafters.  Sure.  In 1902.  They didn’t have the technological advances that were developed decades later that allowed some modern day stadiums (see e.g. Minute Maid Park) to stay open during warm, picturesque summer days and closed during inclimate weather.

Listen, of all the things Man loves to extend their domain upon, Mother Nature isn’t one of them.  (Unless, you’re the Chinese shooting chemicals into clouds to promote rain.  Then, kudos to you.)  So why not give fans the luxury of watching their game in relative comfort and minimize the chances for game delays and cancellations?

For a league that fines managers for delaying the pace of games (sorry Jerry Manuel) it seems pretty hypocritical to allow new stadiums to be built without retractable roofs.  The aforementioned Yankees game started after a rain delay over two hours long.  A typical baseball game lasts three hours.  A Yankees-Red Sox game lasts four hours.  That last thing I want to do on a Monday night is stay up until 1:20 AM so I can watch Robinson Cano strike out with the bases loaded.   This could have been avoided.

Fine, if the new stadium is in Southern California or a desert in Arizona, maybe this isn’t necessary.  (Although it should be pointed out that the University of Phoenix Stadium has a retractable roof for excessive rain and sun as well as a retractable field so the grass can get natural sunlight.)  Teams have to run any proposed changes and stadium designs through the league office first before anything happens.  Really?  Not a word?   Does it really help Major League Baseball’s image as one of the “slower” sports when so many games are delayed due to weather?  Do ratings climb through the roof as fans tune in to watch groundskeepers pull the tarp over the diamond?  Will people wait around to watch a rain delayed game on the tube or will they turn to one of their 300 cable channels and Netflix?  I know I wouldn’t.

We’ve seen this from a marketing and league perspective.  We’ve looked at this from a fan’s perspective.  How about the players and clubs?

Crucial late-year off days and travel days are now spent making up games from four months prior.  Day-night double headers decimate bullpen depth and pitching staffs.  All of this leads to increased fatigue, which can lead to injuries, poor play, and ultimately losses.  Imagine a worst-case scenario:

Club A has a game rained out against Club B in early April.  This game is scheduled to be made up at the end of the year but if it’s not necessary, it won’t be played.  Club A’s playoff chances and positioning come down to the wire.  In fact, it comes down to game number 162 – only it hasn’t been played yet.    So now, Club A has to waste their ace, originally lined up for the first game of their playoff series, to pitch a make-up game for playoff seeding.  Club A wins the game in extra-innings but at the cost of expending their bullpen and lost their corner right fielder for three weeks with a strained hammy.

Unlikely?  Of course.  Avoidable?  Undoubtedly.

Which of course leads us back to my situation.  It’s still raining.  But fortunately, I’m not a new $1.6 billion stadium.  I pull out an umbrella that I put in my bag earlier in the morning.  I can’t control the weather.  But I can at least cover myself.  With a little bit of foresight and a $5 umbrella.