Rain, rain go away, the game's not going to resume anyway

There is a four-letter word that irritates all umpires, players, coaches and fans:

Rain.

There has been plenty of rain so far this Frontier League season and more of it is expected this weekend. The wet stuff has already played havoc with many schedules. For example, Traverse City had five of its first 14 games rained out.

This week, Evansville and Windy City waited out a rain delay of more than three hours Wednesday night before playing. Last night, the Otters and Thunderbolts had a rain delay of almost two hours before they started their doubleheader. Game 2 didn't begin until 11:25 p.m. local time.

Rain was the story for the final two games of the Wild Things-Southern Illinois series this week. The middle game of the series, which started at 10:35 a.m., was played in steady rain for at least six innings. The game Thursday night was called in the middle of the seventh inning because of rain, after a delay of 1 hour, 21 minutes.

That brings me to the point of this post. After all the baseball I've witnessed, I still can't figure out why some games get delayed while some don't, and why some games are rained out or suspended because of rain and others are resumed. It shouldn't be a difficult decision. You play if the field is playable and it's not raining. You stop if the field is a mess or the rain is more than an annoying mist. Too often that's not the case.

A few years ago, there was a Frontier League game at Washington that was delayed for an hour at the scheduled 7:05 p.m. start time though it was not raining. The game was delayed because it "might" rain, I was told. That same year, a similar scenario unfolded in a Pirates game at PNC Park. The tarp was on the field, the start of the game was delayed, but it never rained.

Then there were the Wild Things' games against Southern Illinois. Umpires Mark Schmidt and Robert Reitz Jr., kept the Wednesday game going without a delay, even when heavy rain was falling at the outset of the seventh inning. The heavy stuff fell for only a few minutes, but I was surprised the game wasn't stopped.

The same umpires worked the Thursday game and had no choice but to get both teams off the field after the seventh-inning stretch because of a sudden downpour. It was a good old-fashioned gulleywasher that lasted only about 15 minutes. There were large pools of standing water on the infield warning track between the dugouts, but they drained quickly. It was during this time that an announcement was made in the pressbox that the game would resume in five minutes.

Ten minutes later, players were still not back on the field and it began raining hard again. When the rain finally slacked off and stopped at about 10:35, I assumed play would resume in 20 minutes. Instead, an announcement was made that the game was over and Southern Illinois had won 3-2. Remember, it was not raining at that time.

The reason for ending the game would be that more rain was on the way, right? I had already missed a print deadline, so I wrote a quick game story to be posted to the O-R's website, all along hoping that it would not begin raining before I filed the story and got to my car. I had made a rookie mistake and left my umbrella in the car.

The rest of my night went like this: I hustled to the car without a raindrop in sight. A drive to the O-R office and still no rain. A drive home -- seven miles from Washington -- and still no rain. I dragged my garbage cans to the curb and did so without being hit by a drop a rain. The clock struck 1 a.m. and I decided to check for rain before starting to write this post. Still no rain. ... It's now 2:28 a.m. and time to call it a night. Still no rain.

I have resumed writing this post at 10:45 a.m., and judging by how dry my driveway is, I'd be willing to bet that it still hasn't rained since the Wild Things-Miners game was officially ended.

This all begs the question: Why was the game Thursday night never restarted?

When it stopped raining at 10:35 p.m., it didn't rain again for at least four hours-plus. Was the game called off because it "might" rain? Wasn't the ability to resume games only minutes after it stops raining one of the selling points in replacing the grass field at Consol Energy Park with a turf surface? What was the umpires' reasoning for keeping the players on the field Wednesday afternoon when it was raining but not resuming play Thursday night?

I'm not an umpire, but I know a game should have been resumed Thursday night but wasn't and a game that should have been stopped Wednesday, if only briefly, wasn't.