April 9, 2007
Lost Weekend
Having the Indians shipped off to play three games in Milwaukee is maddening and bizarre, but apparently MLB doesn't want to risk another postponement, and the main question now becomes how the team will respond to their frustrating circumstance. They started hot in Chicago, and were one strike away from being 3-1 when Mike Hargrove did his snow slow dance Friday night.
This PD article is followed by irate fan comments, many directed at Bud Selig for depriving us of three home games that the team could well have played, in wet conditions and 40-degree temperatures, just like most April baseball games in Cleveland. But having already lost a 4-game series to the North Coast weather, Selig decided to grab the sure thing that is the roof on Miller Park.
Ryan at Let'sGoTribe thinks MLB wanted to mess with as few teams as possible...that's one...
The correct solution would have been to switch home series with the Angels, as the Indians are scheduled to travel to Los Angeles in May for a three-game series. The Indians would not lose any additional home dates, and they would get the upcoming series in without dealing with the weather in Cleveland. But because most of the games in Los Angeles had big pre-sales for the series, MLB didn't want to upset another franchise, so they deigned to screw just one team and be done with it, shifting three Indians home games elsewhere. Also working against this possible solution was a clause in the Collective Bargaining Agreement stating that any trip from the West Coast to the East Coast had to include an off-day; the schedule is such that a proposed swap could not happen unless the Player's Association agreed to it.
So the Indians are punished for losing four home games to a freak April blizzard by losing three more home dates after the blizzard...just in case there's another one, I guess...(last time I looked, the forecast for Tuesday was for a balmy 39 with only "a.m. snow".) Largely lost in the national coverage of the snowout story was the little matter of Paul Byrd's no-hitter, also one measly strike away when the umpire decided to delay the game. Plus, our best hitter is hurt, thanks to the muscle-tightening cold.
The DiaTribe has a slide show from the Opener, that shows how diligent the grounds crew was in trying to clear the entire grass outfield of snow with about eight or ten little pissant snowblowers.
I had tickets for Sunday, and was actually relieved when I heard that my Easter Sunday afternoon wouldn't be spent freezing at The Jake. And it brought to mind the mind the second regular season game ever at Jacobs Field in 1994. Just like this year, there had been a beautiful 75-degree sunny day three days prior, the occasion for my first look at the brand new ballpark, a Saturday exhibition against the Pirates before the Monday Home Opener, if I recall correctly.
Like this year, in 1994 it was the Mariners, then featuring Griffey Jr., who were in town for the first series. The opener went 11 innings, and it was cold. For Game Two on Wednesday, I was taking my 15-year old son to see the new park, and we were 10 minutes out of downtown when the white-out shut down the ballgame. Well, it was too nasty to play baseball, but it wasn't too nasty to walk around outside the place and check it out a little...and hit the Flats for a cheeseburger and such. Then it was back the next day for a frozen nine innings of April baseball in Cleveland.
See, this is what we do here! This is not new.
My preference for snowy games in Cleveland however, is for the ones in late October.
Posted by dan at April 9, 2007 7:18 PM