Last night: Nats vs. Mets.
The weather: scattered showers.
The grounds crew at RFK Stadium: completely incapable of getting the tarp out on the field.
Probably a number of factors contributed to the problem, including "they were too hella-slow rolling it out," and "they didn't hire enough guys to pull it." Whatever the cause, they kept getting stuck in the outfield, and weren't able to pull the plastic over the entire infield.
During the first rain delay, it took 10 minutes to pull out the tarp; by the time they finished, the rain had, of course, practically stopped.
During the second rain delay, it took 30 minutes to pull the tarp out.
Kimberly and I knew they weren't going to be able to resume the game, because by the time they finsihed the puddles were literally a foot deep on the infield. But we had to stay to witness the spectacle of the overmatched ground crew desperately tugging on the tarp as a few thousand remaining fans yelled at them to "PULL! PULL! PULL!" When they started playing the Rocky theme, that seemed to provide the inspiration necessary to finally (almost) finish the job.
Of course, after all that, the game was called eight minutes later. Apparently, both teams filed a protest.
What a mess. But that's what's great about baseball: you never know when you're going to see something ridiculous that nobody's ever seen before.
Another funny thing I witnessed during the game was a guy using one of those long plastic horns as a beer funnel during the first rain delay.
The groundscrew at Fenway got so good at rolling the tarp out fast that they accidentally outpaced a newbie on the grounds crew and ran over him with the tarp. Then, they had to rewind the whole thing once they noticed the flailing, screaming lump in the middle of the infield. It was probably scary for him, but pretty awesome for the rest of the world.
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Baseball grounds crew are awesome. I don't understand why they can't play in the rain though.
On a semi-related note:
When I used to go to Braves games, they never lose when I was there. I have yet to go to a winning Royals game.