Rain, rain, go away; we have a game to play
The forecast didn’t lie, and that irritated me. Once an hour
throughout the day Tuesday, I used my computer at The Pinnacle to
check the Doppler radar and Eastern Pacific satellite images,
hoping that the storm streaming toward San Benito County from the
south would somehow miss us.
Of all days for it to rain, it had to be on a day when my Little
League team was scheduled to play at Vet’s Park. We need the rain,
to be sure, but we also need to play. Why can’t it just rain on
Sunday?
Rain, rain, go away; we have a game to play
The forecast didn’t lie, and that irritated me. Once an hour throughout the day Tuesday, I used my computer at The Pinnacle to check the Doppler radar and Eastern Pacific satellite images, hoping that the storm streaming toward San Benito County from the south would somehow miss us.
Of all days for it to rain, it had to be on a day when my Little League team was scheduled to play at Vet’s Park. We need the rain, to be sure, but we also need to play. Why can’t it just rain on Sunday?
The hit-and-miss nature of this week’s rain gave me a false sense of security, as showers pelted Sixth Street for a few minutes then blew away, offering a literal ray of hope. My playing days are long past me, so game days as a coach give me the rush that I used to get when I toiled – and I mean toiled – on our local ball fields.
Now, my joy comes from evaluating players, drafting a team, helping them get better at practice, creating a lineup, giving them signals from the third-base coach’s box, watching their joy when they win and coming up with a good “lesson” speech when they lose.
So another break in the storm Tuesday afternoon had me believing that we’d get our 5:30 game in. My sons and I headed to the ballpark, full of hope as we listened to the San Francisco Giants play their opening day game at AT&T Park. If they could play in The City, then we should be able to play in The Town.
We headed to the batting cages, a sprinkle or two not deterring us from our task. After a few batters, the rain stopped falling again, continuing its seemingly perpetual tease. I kept an eye toward the southwest, from where the showers were arriving. It didn’t look good.
Just as I finished throwing to my final batter and we headed toward our sunken and – thankfully – covered dugout, the skies opened up.
It was a light pitter-patter on the metal roof at first, our eye-level view of the playing field telling us that the dirt wasn’t yet too wet to play on. The drops came more frequently and fell harder as we sat there, telling ourselves that there was still half an hour until the first pitch.
Sequestering 10- to 12-year-olds in a dugout for half an hour sets up an interesting dynamic, with some kids sitting quietly, staring out at the field and probably wishing that they could be at home watching cartoons; while others jump around like caged lions, or monkeys, or Chihuahuas.
Parents waited patiently to see if the game would be cancelled, while the players wanted to go run around the field and get wet and muddy. They weren’t so concerned about the impact that a delayed game would have on the pitching rotation or the impact that being wet and cold would have on their health.
There was rain; there was mud; that’s a recipe for fun.
As league directors debated the merits of waiting out the rain, the sky decided to open up and make that decision for them. It rained as heavy as any of us have ever seen it in Hollister, so much to the dismay of the kids who enjoyed walking in the rain – I remember those days – the game was called off and rescheduled.
It’s never fun to walk away from a game, but nature conspired against us. We would have floated away had we stayed at the park much longer, and the kids wouldn’t have minded it. It was a wonderful reminder that some of us adults take the real games a little too seriously at times.
