Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Slippery when wet

What’s it like to try to pitch effectively in a pouring rain? To throw strikes with a wet ball? To not let the ball slip out of your hand and bean the batter? To not go down in a mud slide from the mound?

Ask Brett Anderson.

The Dodgers’ lefty had the unenviable task of trying to sit down Colorado Rockies’ hitters Friday night while also attempting to ignore pesky, steady rain drops. And yeah, he also had to maintain his footing and not slide of the slippery mound.

"You can't really think about that, or you'll be hesitant and you could hurt yourself worse," Anderson said. "But it was weird circumstances."

In this video (for some reason the video is not embedding on the blog), you can see Anderson struggle through the rain as he faced the Rockies’ Charlie Blackmon. Anderson got off to a good start against Blackmon, tallying a no balls and two strikes count, but then threw four straight balls to walk the Rockies’s outfielder. Anderson, as you will see, slipped and almost fell as he threw ball four.

Give Blackmon credit; he also had to focus through the rain drops on some 91-mph heat from Anderson to draw the walk. And you know he had to be thinking about the possibility of a wet ball zipping toward his skull after slipping from Anderson’s hand.

Lousy weather conditions persisted and umpires called the game after five innings, shortly after Blackmon’s at-bat, giving the Dodgers a 2-1 win over the Rockies at Coors Field.

"It was difficult. Pretty poor conditions," Anderson said. "I can't believe we played through five innings of that. It's probably the hardest rain I've played through on the field.”

Rain postponed the following night’s action, and then… then came the snow, which covered Coors Field Saturday, prompting Anderson to tweet:

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