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1. JimMusComp likes Billy Eppler.... Posted: July 24, 2014 at 12:26 AM (#4756722)Comedy gold, Jerry!
I'm not a violent man by nature, but I'm afraid if I ever met Sterling, I'd be tempted to punch him in the face to keep him from doing play-by-play for several weeks. In the meantime, the Yankees could hire a real announcer, not a pompous ass who insults New York fans' intelligence.
As to the game, I have to admit, it leaves a bad taste for NY to win a game primarily because their ground crew failed at their job.
Earl Weaver having the grounds crew dump the water from the tarp over the Memorial Stadium field in 1978 is the reason we have "suspended games" now. It's also indirectly why Red Sox fans hate Bucky Dent.
This was one of those classic Miami downpours that lasted like 20 minutes but during that 20 minutes you thought the world was ending. The delay wound up being about 3 1/2-4 hours as I recall. I would be curious why this game wasn't picked up after that sort of delay last night.
As tempted as I am as a Red Sox fan to scream "Fix!" and suggest that Yankees be charged with a forfeit the conditions looked pretty bad. I suspect this sort of thing has happened to every team at some point.
Seems like a combination of wind and rain.
Having helped pull a tarp onto a baseball field a few times, I can tell you, that ###### is heavy even before the water gets on it.
Not totally, but had they gotten the tarp over the field on the first attempt, the infield wouldn't have turned into a beach at high tide. RE: who decided to let the game go on, isn't that also the grounds crew which does the weather monitoring? That's been my impression over the years. I know the Umps make that determination once the game begins, but I've seen plenty of games where the GC super. runs up to the crew chief between innings with presumably weather info. After all, Dale Scott and his crew were in the middle of the game, while these storms were rolling into the area.
I've also done tarp duty before, it does suck ass. This was definitely a bad hand for the grounds crew last night, I'm just saying it wasn't their finest hour.
And the head of the grounds crew was doing that. Dale Scott knew the situation, and the grounds crew was watching him and waiting for him to give the go-ahead to put the tarp on.
Jeff Wilson points out that the same thing happened last season in Arlington. I was there that night and it was hilarious but scary, as the winds took the tarp and blew it around the stadium like a handkerchief. That game was rained out altogether and we got rain checks.
The design of certain stadiums might lead to these weird wind effects more than others, but it just might be a freaky happenstance anyway.
This time's a thousand...in minor league ball the tarp crew is basically every full-time member of the front office, from GM on down - and each body, plus the grounds crew and a couple of security guys or something like that is needed under "easy" conditions. In a downpour is rough...a downpour with wind is the worst, because the thing just wants to take off on you.
Rolling it back up - while usually done under better weather conditions is just as bad sometimes - the thing is soaked (hence the dumping into the OF) - and by the time you are done, you are too.
I missed out on the worst tarp debacle though. My second year with my last team, the tarp was due for replacement. It came in during spring training while I was with the team in Florida, and arrived on an enclosed trailer. The team didn't own a forklift and no one thought to rent or borrow one...so the solution was to simply have the whole front office get in the truck and just push the thing out...and from their enjoy the fun of wrangling it from the parking lot into the stadium....all while I was enjoying all of the comforts of the Tiger's lakeland comlplex (which is a whole other fun story).
What happened to automatic tarp machines like that? Did they get rid of em because of Vince's injury or do they only work on turf or what?
The tarp was *thisclose* to flying out into the right-center field seats last night.
Having helped pull a tarp onto a baseball field a few times, I can tell you, that ###### is heavy even before the water gets on it.
Consider yourself lucky that you weren't around when the tarps were made of canvas, which were much heavier to begin with and quickly got saturated with water and provided little protection once the rain got beyond a certain level of intensity. It's no coincidence that before World War II teams would schedule one or two home doubleheaders a year, and yet often wind up playing 10 or 15 of them after rain had wiped out one game after another. Even in the 50's, you'd see some teams having to play half a dozen makeup doubleheaders in the last six weeks of the season. The coming of lightweight waterproof tarps did away with most of that.
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