Truist Field, Cumberland (Atlanta), Georgia (MLB #16 - Hurricane Helene and a rain delay)

 

 

              This is the second venue that reminds us of the effects of hurricanes on baseball, so maybe it’s appropriate that we had our first rain delay of this trip (and only our third overall).

              Hurricane Helene

In the last week of the 2024 regular season, the Diamondbacks, Mets, and Braves were competing for the last two of the three wild-card spots in the post-season. Moreover, the Mets and Braves had three more games to play against each other, scheduled for Atlanta on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. But Hurricane Helene was bearing down on Atalanta, and the Mets and Braves were playing gamesmanship with schedule.

They’d had a game in Atlanta rained out in the first two weeks of the season, and could have made in up when both teams had an off-day, But the Mets didn’t want to have to fly into Atlanta for a single game, so they asked to have it rescheduled to be added to a two-game series the last week of the season. At the time, that seemed fine.

But as that final (now three-game) series approached, the hurricane was also approaching, scheduled to hit with its full fury sometime late Wednesday. There was a suggestion that they could move the opening game up to Monday, then play a double-header on Tuesday, ahead of the scheduled arrival of the hurricane. This time, the Braves objected. It wasn’t clear whether it was because of they were trying to get particular starting pitchers available for particular games, or because they didn’t want to lose the revenue from three sold out games by giving up one for a doubleheader, or both, but they weren’t inclined to budge, and MLB declined to force them to change the schedule, even though the Commisioner’s office could have.

So they played Tuesday, and the Wednesday and Thursday games got rained out. After the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday games were played, which should have finished the regular season, one of the worst possible outcomes had occurred. The Arizona Diamondbacks had played their full schedule of 162 games, winning 89. The Braves and Mets had each played 160 games, and had each won 88. If the Braves and Mets made up those two games, so that they’d each have 162, if either team won an 89^th game, they would qualify for the playoffs, because they each had won more than they lost against the Diamondbacks during the season. That meant that those last two games both mattered, so the Mets had to fly to Atlanta Sunday evening to play a doubleheader on Monday, and whoever made it into the playoffs (it could be only one, it could be both), they would have to fly somewhere overnight to begin playing on Tuesday.  

That set up the uncomfortable situation where the team that won the first game of the doubleheader would be in the playoffs, but would have to play one more game, with their only incentive being pride. As it turned out, the Mets scored 6 runs in the last two innings to beat Braves 8-7 in the first game. To no one’s surprise, the Braves won the second game (3-0), although the Mets did use most of their regular starting players. So those two were in, the Dbacks out. Of course, while making the postseason is a goal, winning it is the real goal. The Braves got swept in the first round, and lost their first seven games of 2025 for good measure. The Mets did survive the first two rounds before losing in the NLCS.

              As a Dbacks fan, I can’t complain too much – we had our chances. The Mets, who had won slightly more games than they’d lost for the season until that point, lost on a walk-off on Aug. 25, leaving them 7 games behind us with 31 to go, and coming into Phoenix. The Diamondbacks, meanwhile, had won six in a row. These seemed to be two teams headed in opposite directions. I commented to Kerry that I thought that if the Dbacks won 2 of 3, the Mets were finished. After splitting the first two games, the Mets scored a run in the top of the 9^th inning of the final game to break a tie, and hung on to win, meaning we’d won only one of the three. The Mets then won their next eight straight, and 21 of their final 31 games of the season. 

              Playoffs to make the “postseason”

But the fan in me still would have liked to see the tie decided by another couple of games, rather than by calculations based on games played months earlier. Until 2022, if there was a tie for the last spot in the playoffs, it was decided on the field, leading to some memorable winner-take-all games.

* The most famous, in part because both teams were in New York, was in 1951, when the New York (later San Francisco) Giants won 37 of their final 44 games to tie the Brooklyn (later Los Angeles) Dodgers for first in the National League. At the time, the rules called for a best two-out-of-three tie-breaker. The teams split the first two games, then the Giants came back from a 4-1 deficit in the 9^th inning to win the final game 5-4 on a walk-off three-run home run by Bobby Thomson, known in baseball lore (and Wikipedia) as “The Shot Heard ‘Round the World.”

* Another famous one, involving another New York team, came in 1978, when Bucky Dent, a Yankee shortstop who had hit a total of four home runs during the regular season, hit a homer in the 7^th inning, giving the Yankees a lead over the Boston Red Sox that they held onto (thanks, in part, to a home run from a more likely source, Hall of Fame slugger Reggie Jackson). Any Red Sox fan from the time still  bears ill-will toward Dent.

* My personal favorite came in 2007. It’s not nearly as famous, since neither team was from New York City, but it finished with a wild and controversial come-from-behind win in the 13^th inning. It’s also a personal favorite because it involved the team for whom Kerry did the non-sports medicine during Spring Training that year, the Colorado Rockies. The Rockies had been stumbling along, winning a few more than they lost, until September 16. From then until the World Series in late October, they lost only one game. However, their surge at the end of the regular season was only enough to tie them with the San Diego Padres at the end of the season, leading to the tie-breaker. It was 6-6 after nine innings, then the Padres took an 8-6 lead in the 13^th. In the bottom of the 13^th, the Padres brought in future Hall of Fame relief pitcher Trevor Hoffman, but the Rockies got to him, tying the score on a triple by Matt Holliday, whose family were favorites of Kerry’s. Then, on a fly ball to right field, Holliday tagged at third base, the right fielder made a strong throw to the plate, and the ball and Holliday arrived at the same time, with the catcher trying to simultaneously catch the ball and block Holliday from touching home plate (a legal maneuver, then). He didn’t make the catch, but it wasn’t clear whether Holliday, who made an awkward chin-first slide, actually touched the plate. But the umpire said he had, and the Rockies won their first seven games of the post-season to make their first and (to date) only World Series, although they lost to the Red Sox.

* Similarly, I’m sure Seattle fans remember the 1995 tiebreaker game, where the Mariners, behind ace pitcher Randy Johnson, beat the California Angels to make it to the post-season for the first time.

But tie-breaker games and series are no more, replaced by computations based on the teams’ regular season records against one another. I’d rather have the drama be in the games than in the weather forecast, but it does make it easier to schedule the post-season for television.

The rain delay

The sky was clear before tonight’s game, but the forecast said that there was about a 50% chance of rain, starting about two hours after game time. In fact, there were a few drops of rain starting a few minutes less than two hours into the game, the umpires called a delay at almost exactly the two-hour mark, at the end of the 8^th inning (with the Los Angeles Dodgers leading the Braves 2-1), and then it really started pouring.

Some fans left, the others got under cover, and the scoreboard showed various people dancing.

After 45 minutes, we left, even though the rain had let up, and the grounds crew was starting to prepare to remove the tarp from the infield. But I figured it would be another half-hour before they’d be able to restart the game (it was), and that there would probably be only about 15 minutes of play to finish the 9^th inning (that, too, was close). The 9^th inning we missed consisted of five outs, a Braves’ batter drawing a walk, then a soft ground out. So we didn’t miss much, and we’ll definitely count it as being at the stadium.

Plus, the forecast for tomorrow night’s game is not good. Wunderground.com, my favorite weather app, says it’s a 100% chance of rain at game time, dropping to 50% two hours later. I think we’ll be sitting in the stadium a while.

The game:

In our last game, a rookie making his first start, Noah Cameron, had a no-hitter going into the 7^th inning, although there were some well-hit balls. This time, Dodger starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto had a no-hitter into the 6^th, but he had no-hitter stuff. He’s in only his second year in the majors, but he pitched professionally in Japan. He’s been one of the game’s best pitchers this year (he was named the National League Pitcher of the Month for April, a couple of days ago), and he looked it tonight. After 15 batters, the Braves had only hit one ball out of the infield.

The Braves’ pitcher, Grant Holmes, pitched well, too. He started the game by striking out Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman, in order, in the first, all players who have won at least one Most Valuable Player award (Ohtani won it last season, in fact). He struck out six of the first 10 hitters, but then the Dodgers got a run on two infield hits, a walk, and a sacrifice fly in the 4^th inning. Holmes was dominant again in the 5^th, but then suddenly looked like he was living on borrowed time in the next inning. Ohtani hit a ball at 101 mph (the first ball anyone on the Dodgers had hit harder than 95 mph), but it was right at the second baseman, for an out. Betts then hit one just as hard, but it was in the air, so it cleared the fence as a home run. After a walk, the next hitter grounded into a double play – by hitting a ball at the third baseman at 105 mph. After another 100+ ball to start the next inning, Holmes left the game, but the way Yamamoto and the other Dodger pitchers were going (the Braves only got two hits for the entire game), the Braves didn't have a chance of catching up.