When a Rain Delay Becomes Something Special

According to Marlins Man’s tweet at 2:08 a.m., there were 65 fans left at Yankee Stadium after last night’s rain delay.  Maybe because they dried out for three hours (the double meaning counts), but when Kirby Yates took the mound at 2:15 a.m. against the Rangers, the tired and true gathered behind the dugout and home plate were remarkably really still into the game, Randy Levine’s wrath from their downward migration be damned. And they stayed in good spirits, despite Yates quickly looking more like Kirby “Plunkett”: hitting 3 batters and giving up a one run lead inherited from Aroldis Chapman 3 1/2 hours before.

The omnipresent orange man also tweeted his respect for who stuck around, which I echo. I’ve never understood leaving early because it’s BASEBALL and part of its uniqueness and value proposition is there is no clock and comebacks are always possible. As a fan, you accept that sometimes the last chance comes at 3:48 p.m., sometimes an excruciating 3:48 a.m.

Look, I get it:  people have jobs.  It’s cold.  A 3+ hour delay is insane. There’s the underrated sleep thing.  So sure, if it’s Giants v Green Bay 42-6 with 11 minutes left in the 4th Q, I’m outta there with you.  But with baseball, the benefit of getting on the train or highway early—or in this case before 3:30 a.m.—isn’t worth the higher-than-other-sports risk of missing something memorable.

Modern baseball history demonstrates:  In 2010, the Rockies were down 6 against the Cardinals in the ninth, then scored an improbable nine runs and won 12-9.  The Phillies scored 9 runs in the 9th to beat the Dodgers 12-11 in 1990.  And just a few weeks ago, the Royals had their greatest ninth inning comeback in history against the White Sox, scoring seven runs in the ninth and beating 1000-1 odds.  “There’s no shot clock, there’s no time clock,” White Sox manager Robin Ventura said after that game, reflecting on the loss.

While comebacks are possible of course they’re improbable. In 73 seasons studied by Retrosheet, just 213 teams came back from a deficit of four runs after eight innings. That’s a success rate of <0.5%.  Which is why I never got mad at my S.O. or friends for leaving early:  I get I’m the nutcase and you really have to love baseball to like those odds.  But they’re not zero.  And that’s really not the larger point anyway.

I was in the Bronx on September 11, 2009 when Jeter broke Gehrig’s hit record (2722), one of the most special games I was privileged to see.  But it was cold, rainy and the Yankees were being outplayed by Baltimore, so I got ditched in the 7th when it started to rain and a long delay was announced. Like last night’s painful loss to the Rangers, there was no comeback (10-4), but the game is seared in my memory forever: sitting well past the wee hours feet from home plate, both dugouts seemingly outnumbering the crowd and the magic of baseball royalty’s most recent milestone still in the air.

Yankee fans don’t have much to cheer about this season.  But I’m hoping for those who stuck around last night, it was a season highlight and worth every minute of lost sleep or inevitable grief.  Despite the painful way an easy win turned into another are-you-kidding-me eye-rolling loss, to be in a near empty Yankee Stadium with the Gods of Baseball around and a game still going on when most of the world is asleep, that’s pretty special.

“In baseball, you can’t kill the clock. You’ve got to give the other man his chance. That’s why this is the greatest game.” – Earl Weaver