Not quite a flamethrowin’ disaster, but Phillies game postponed by rain
PHILADELPHIA » Adam Eaton broke into one of his patented wide grins when asked to describe the infield at Citizens Bank Park Monday.
“Cake!” the affable National answered. “Pudding!”
Call it pudding cake, then. Unfortunately for Eaton, the rest of the players for the Washington Nationals and Phillies and the few fans that turned out early, calling the infield surface pudding cake was reason enough to call the game.
All this because somebody on the Phillies’ grounds crew made (or didn’t make) the decision to not cover the infield with a tarp Friday night. All those storms that rolled through pounded the field, and though it was belatedly covered for Saturday’s showery day and Sunday’s follow-up deluge ... that didn’t prevent the need postpone Monday’s game and open the series with what’s being called “a traditional doubleheader” on Tuesday.
The single-admission twin-bill hopefully starts at 3 p.m . ... But does anyone know what the forecast is for South Philly then?
“This happens, especially this time of the year,” said scheduyled Monday starter Jake Arrieta, who will pitch one of the two Tuesday games, weather willing.
“I heard that the field took on a lot of water yesterday or the day before,” Arrieta said. “They’re out there doing the best they could to get it ready. The last thing we want to do is get anyone hurt from poor conditions, on their side or our side. It is what it is. They will continue to get it ready and we’ll be ready to play two tomorrow.
“Hopefully the weather cooperates.”
Ah, but let’s go to the big weather board and ... yeee-iikkkess.
OK, it’s not like Hurricane Florence is just around our bend, but that steady stream of South Philly thunderstorms forecast for late morning into the evening doesn’t bode well.
Yet when asked about the confidence level that the games can be played Tuesday, Phillies players rep Rhys Hoskins said, “Yeah, they are (confident). Yeah.”
Hoskins had been in deep conversation with teammates in the clubhouse Monday while the situation outside slowly revealed itself. One of the first Phils to realize how bad the conditions were was manager Gabe Kapler, who instantly adopted an upbeat note about it all.
“Friday night we expected a quarter of an inch, we got an inch-and-a-half,” Kapler reported. “Same kind of thing we were dealing with up in the City (uh, that would be New York). We had a hard time drying the field. But we’re working as fast as we can. We have the best groundskeeper crew in baseball. They’re doing everything possible to dry the field out and get it ready for us to play tonight.”
Part of that effort, to the delight of the news cameras and reporter cell phones trained on the pre-game proceedings, was the use to two rather large, propane-fueled blow torches applied right to the dirt.
No varmints were seen coming up through any infield holes. But the portable driers - still in use hours after the game was officially postponed - were working very slowly.
“Our guys have been working all day,” Howard Smith, vice-president of business affairs, said a couple of hours prior to the scheduled starting time. “It’s an unfortunate situation. The field has taken on a significant amount of water in a very short period of time and Mother Nature hasn’t cooperated. But I think we will be playing tonight.” Or not. Of course, had the tarp not been forgotten Friday ... or was it forgotten? Maybe a few White House investigators could look into it.
“The field’s not always tarped,” Smith said. “The field wasn’t tarped on Friday night because we were supposed to get a small amount of rain. If you tarp the field 24 hours a day, the field will turn brown and it will die. It’s an on and off situation. We didn’t tarp it Friday night. In retrospect, had I known it was going to be this much rain, we would’ve tarped it. But we didn’t. The damage was done and we’re just playing catch-up.”
Unfortunately, that catch-up wasn’t sweet enough to get the field past the pudding cake stage. But heating the concoction with a couple of flamethrowers added an interesting layer of intrigue. Field Flambe, anyone? “They’re just blowtorches,” Smith said of the two weapons. Asked if they had been back in the maintenance storage closet, Smith said, “No, this is something creative.
“Basically, we’re drying out the top layer of moisture to sort of turn the field over and roll the field,” Smith added. “It’s actually working.”
OK, maybe by Tuesday it will.
The decision to call it a day took a while. So Bryce Harper of all people grabbed a rake to help the crew, and with the game umpires, players, coaches and any brave patent-leather walker from the upstairs offices coming down to see if the field could hold their body weight, everybody found that a long day of unprotected rain followed by two more days of water on top of a too-late tarp isn’t a good soil preservation idea.
It did provide a unique texture, though.
“Very spongy,” Hoskins said. “From my understanding the field took on a little more water than they hoped-slash-expected, based on what was forecasted. They were here working on it before I got here today and that was at 1 o’clock, so I know they did all they could.
“I think everybody saw the flamethrowers, so obviously they tried to pull out all the stops to get the game on.”