NBT Bank Stadium, Syracuse (It would have been AAA #19)

 

It's never a good sign when the day's picture has a tarp covering the infield. 

Last night, we went to a game in Toronto where the roof was closed because of storms in the area. Although I definitely prefer the ambience of Rogers Centre when it the roof is open, with a clear sky and the CN Tower gracefully soaring overhead, I much prefer an indoor game to a rainout, which is why I think retractable roofs are so civilized, if expensive. No minor league stadium has a retractable roof. 

Those showers in Toronto yesterday? They were moving east. We drove through them on the way to Syracuse this morning, and we didn't buy tickets for the game until the last minute, not wanting to be stuck with a rain check. 

When we got to Syracuse, the sky was clear, and there was a nice crowd heading to the stadium, so we bought our ticket, but bought it in the upper row of the lower deck, on the side the wind was coming from, figuring that there might be some rain. As it turns out, that was a very good choice. Ours was the only row that didn't evacuate when it rained. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The game started, and the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp, owners of one of the best records in AAA, got a three-run homer in the top of the first. Given that Syracuse has lost 10 straight, it wasn't looking good for the home team. Jacksonville's pitcher, making his first start at AAA after getting called up from AA earlier in the week, struggled a bit in the bottom half of the inning, but it was mostly with logistics. He called called for a pitch clock violation (we see that about once every 5 or 10 games) and he got called for a balk for throwing to first base three times during the same at-bat (one of the new rules to speed up the game that I think I've seen happen one other time in three years), but he got out of the inning without anyone scoring. But shortly before the end of the inning, it started drizzling.

Then it started raining hard, so the umpires called for the tarp to come out. But the PA announcer said that the rain delay wasn't expected to be long. Kerry and I had brought e-books along, so we just read, and stayed almost completely dry, while everyone seated in lower rows went up to the concourse.

After an hour (which I guess isn't that long), it stopped raining, the sky had lightened up, and the umpires came out and started walking around the field. I thought that we'd have the tarp off in five minutes, and the game restarted in 30. Instead, they announced that the game was suspended until tomorrow afternoon, when it will be completed as part of a doubleheader. 

Two things about that decision.

First, why did they suspend it? It had stopped raining, and while the weather radar showed another line of rain to the west, it looked to be at least three hours away, long enough to complete the game. But maybe they knew something I didn't. Or maybe when the umpires went out, they decided that the part of the field not covered by the tarp was dangerously wet. Major league stadiums have the drainage down to an art, so that the outfield is dry within a few minutes of the rain stopping, but I don't know about the minors.

Second, that throws our plans badly out of whack. We're driving to Philadelphia tomorrow, then flying home the next day, so we don't have an extra day, the only time in this trip when we didn't (except for Philadelphia, which has the advantage of major league grounds crews). We now have rain checks that are valid for 365 days. Our original plan was to come back to this part of the country in two years, and go to games in New York City and Massachusetts, making fabled Fenway Park the 60th park of the 60 in our quest. Instead, I think we'll probably do NYC and Massachusetts next year, and make our way up to Syracuse then. 

Ironically, our good friends Paul Fitzgerald and Sue Baldwin, who live in Syracuse, were very interested in our trip, and were going to do some games (we'd talked about Syracuse and the Yankees) with us, but are currently out of town. Turns out, they can't avoid us that easily.

Nor can we avoid the rain, despite the PA system playing "Have You Ever Seen Rain?" and "Who'll Stop the Rain?" and probably some others I didn't notice.