A Rainout Blog Hall of Fame? Yes… let’s do this

How about we start a Rainout Blog Sports/Weather Hall of Fame?

Not just me, all of us. You, too.

I’ve been thinking about doing this project for a while, ever since I made a post about Rick Dempsey way back in July, 2007.

So, what makes a Rainout Blog Hall of Famer? I’ve been wrestling with that question for a while.

(Warning: Here goes a lot rambling…)

At first, I was thinking of individuals who have had outstanding performances in a bad weather games. While his performances did not happen while games were in play, Dempsey certainly made his mark performing on soaked tarps during rain delays.

To me, the notoriety Dempsey received for his acts make him a first-ballot Rainout Blog Hall of Famer. Also, I think we need to give Dempsey credit for the rash of rain delay antics we saw a few years ago by college baseball games. With those 1970s performances, we may not have seen those elaborate, choreographed acts performed by want-to-be thespian college ball players. 

So, we’ve established that qualifications for entry into the RoBHoF are not exclusive to great on-field game performances. If a player, or coach, or fan, or whomever – how about a horse? Sure! – performs in a manner that is widely recognized, then that person, or whatever, can be considered for induction. 

A performance that is good or bad, right?

Right.

That brings us to Leon Lett. 

Remember Lett’s gaffe in the snow during in the 1993 Thanksgiving Day game that snatched defeat for his Cowboys from the jowls of victory? Of course you remember. We all remember.

I’m not comparing the moment to far more significant historic events, but I remember exactly where I was when the play happened.

For that one play in the snow, an unusual snow game for Texas Stadium, Lett is a Rainout Blog Hall of Famer. 

First ballot? We’ll debate that later.

So, who else? Hmmm. 

We’ll, LeShean McCoy had more than 200 yards rushing to lead the Eagles to a win over the Lions in blizzard-like conditions a couple of weeks ago. Does that qualify? 

Maybe.

It was great day for McCoy, but is it his performance that stands out about that game?

No. It’s the snow.

Ok. So, do we induct events/games in to the hall of fame?

If so, the Ice Bowl has to be the leading candidate. And when I think of weather games, I immediately think of the Fog Bowl playoff game at Soldier Field in 1988. There are many, many others to consider.

If I’m going to do this, take the time for such an uber fun project as creating a sports/weather hall of fame, it’s going to take a lot of time, thought and research. 

Wanna help? 

If you have suggestions or creative ideas for the project, I’ll gladly accept. Send me an email or tweet (@TheRealChadOz).

Mae West is topless while rain falls in the "Bottom of the Sixth"

How steaming mad would your wife be if each year, a super hot movie star, let's say Scarlett Johansson in this instance, offered up to you her best holiday wishes via a Christmas card that included a photo of her, you know, totally buck naked?

My wife would pop me with the sweet spot of a Louisville Slugger.

But you know whose wife, or so she claimed, did not get ticked off?

Beans Reardon's wife, Eugenia, that's who.

I've been researching through a bit of baseball history recently and came across Beans, a National League umpire from 1926 to 1949. He was known for his beer drinking (not on the diamond, I hope) and strong language (you bet that happened on the diamond). He was behind the plate when Babe Ruth hit his 714th and final home run.

Scarlett Johansson, not Mae West

From what I gather from a little research, the Boston native – yeah, tha's how he got the nickname Beans – lived a spectacular life.

You may not know the name Beans Reardon, but you've seen him.

You remember the Norman Rockwell 1949 Saturday Evening Post cover and paiting "Bottom of the Sixth" featuring three umpires standing together under a slight rain? Beans, with his face all scrunched up, is the umpire in the middle.

In addition to appearing in Rockwell paintings, Beans owned an Anheuser-Busch beer distribution business – he later sold it to Frank Sinatra – and he appeared in several movies.

That brings us back to Mae West.

Beans and West were friends, and according to rumors or whatever, West was said to have sent nude photos of herself to Beans each year at Christmas.

Reading about Bean's life, all of his accomplishments and what not, this is the item that piqued my curiosity, as you can imagine.  

So I dug a little deeper and found an interesting Los Angeles Times story from way back in 1988 about Bean's wife, Eugenia, who in the interview confirms Mae West annually sent nude photos of herself, or as Eugenia suggest in the article, the same photo each year, to her husband.

Mae West

And apparently, Beans enlarged the photo and hung it on his den wall.

The last paragraph of the aforementioned L.A. Times story places Eugenia in the den, describing the room's contents"

"And Beans, who also was an actor, can be seen with Gary Cooper and other movie stars on a wall dominated by a large nude picture of Mae West. 'She always sent him a copy of that picture every Christmas,' Eugenia said. 'No, I was never jealous.'"

McCann’s first Yankees rain out… in November?

Yankee fans are waiting (in the rain) for McCann.

If you’re a Yankees fan, you’re excited and thankful to have a new catcher. But, if you’re looking to see Brian McCann in pinstripes at an introductory news conference before Thanksgiving, it’s 

likely you’ve grabbed the short end of the wishbone.

Our boy Wallace Matthews reports on ESPN New York that McCann’s trip to the Bronx for a physical and press conference is likely to be postponed by severe weather. Matthews writes:

“According to a Yankee source, the club would like to fly McCann in from his Atlanta-area home either today or tomorrow, but forecasts of a severe rain-and-wind storm later this afternoon may well push everything back to next week. The concern is that once McCann arrives here, he will not be able to return home in time to spend the holiday with his family.”

Matthews also quotes the Yankees source as saying, "The odds are we won't see him (in New York) until next week.

-- rain --

Raining Champions

The Dominican Republic battled through a persistent rain Tuesday night to take a 3-0 win over Puerto Rico and capture the World Baseball Classic title in soggy conditions at San Francisco's AT&T Park.

True to the weather forecast, rain began falling as the two Caribbean neighbors played in the fourth inning, just about the time I finished tucking my kids into bed and tuned into the game. How lucky can a sports/weather blogger get, right?

(I had to toss in that last bit of information because this post was beginning to sound a bit too newsy.)

Anyway, the rain proved to be only a minor inconvenience, probably more so to the 35,703 fans than to the ballplayers. However, as the wet stuff continued to fall, Dominican Republic pitcher Samuel Deduno did ask for the grounds crew to work on the front of the mound. He also had a pitch slip out of his hand during the frame.

Deduno, who struck out five in five scoreless innings, got some help from center fielder Alejandro De Aza who made a nice catch on a long drive during perhaps the heaviest part of the rain. The catch enabled Deduno to get out of the inning in which he had issued two walks.

MLB.com has a photo gallery containing a handful of rainy night shots.

Baseball is about to drop

Stop me if you've read this before: When I began writing this blog about seven years ago – has it been that long? – I intended it to be about baseball only. If you think the current format of me writing about sports and weather is dull and boring, a blog about baseball rainouts would have been a snooze, bro.

What would I have done in the baseball offseason? Oh, I guess the same thing I do now: let the blog sit for months at a time without an update.

Anyway, had I stuck with the baseball-only format, today would have been – actually, it still is – a perfect day to simply say, "Hey, spring training is here and baseball and its inevitable rainouts are right around the hot corner.

So today, with my first blog update in more than a month, I give you this cool Associated Press photo from St. Louis Cardinals spring training in Jupiter, Fla.

What's this photo have to do with weather, you ask. Check out the glove on the fence. Tiny rain spots. Duh!  

According to the photo caption, rain fell at Cardinals camp… team goes into the clubhouse… rain stops, team goes outside to stretch… rain picks up again… blah, blah, blah.

Rain Spoils Gardner's Work

If you're a New York Yankees fan eager for the return of Brett Gardner to the lineup, you'll have to wait perhaps a day longer for the left fielder to test his injured right elbow. Gardner's scheduled rehab game with Tripe-A Scranton/Wilkes Barre, know this year as the Empire State Yankees, was rained out last night. The team is scheduled to play a double header today against Columbus in Rochester. (Confused yet?) Gardner has been out of the New York lineup since April 18 with a strained right elbow.

Rochester is far away from The Rainout Blog headquarters, but the trusty Weather.com tells me it's raining right now in Rochester, just as it is at TRoB HQ. However, the forecast calls for rain to cease a few hours before the 5:05 first pitch and for a 30 percent chance of rain the rest of the night.

The image at right was posted Monday on the Empire State Yankees Facebook page.

What Are You Waiting For?

The game has been postponed. 

Fans in this Associated Press photo from April 30 are shown braving wet conditions during a rain delay at Comerica Park in Chicago. 

The patient fans were waiting to see the hometown White Sox play the Kansas City Royals. However, rain kept falling and the game was postponed until Sept. 24, a date that had been a mutual off day for both clubs. 

The rainout was the second in three days for the Royals.

Can They Play Two in the Snow?

I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait for spring and baseball season, particularly after seeing – or is it despite seeing? – this photo posted last night on the Cubs’ Facebook page of the snow falling on the statues outside Wrigley Field.

It’s been an unusually mild and quiet winter here at The Rainout Blog world headquarters, but I’m eagerly awaiting the days when I don’t have to fear waking up and driving to work in nine inches of snow.

For now, with Opening Day still a few months away, we can sneak a peek at the streets outside Wrigley Field, where currently a little snow lingers, and dream of the warmer, baseball-filled days ahead.

The Science Behind The Splash Hit

The Mets' Carlos Delgado launched a Mike Morris pitch deep to right field Wednesday that quickly found its way over the 24-foot-high right field fence and into the cool waters of McCovey Cove. The Giants radio crew quickly pointed out that the Splash Hit was only the 56th since AA&T Park opened in 2000.

That number was a bit surprising to me and the play-by-play guy – it wasn't John Miller, but the other guy. Of those, 42 have been hit by the home team, and not surprisingly, 34 Splash Hits have come off the bat of Barry Bonds. Still the total of 56 seems a bit low. Before the park opened, there was much hype surrounding the possibility of numerous Splash Hits.

So why are there fewer deposits into McCovey's Cove than we expected? The answer, of course, can be explained by physics and meteorology. Unfortunately, I'm no expert in either subject, so, to learn more, I went Googling.

A 2004 article in the San Francisco Chronicle gives a bit of insight into the subject from high school physics teacher Paul Robinson who was determined to get to the bottom of the physics involved in the Splash Hit. Below are some excerpts from the article.

Before he was done, Robinson would be crawling around the stadium with a tape measure during the offseason, checking distances, discovering among other things that the right-field wall is a little lower than the 24 feet advertised by the team.
He studied classic baseball-physics research by Robert Adair of Yale University and Mont Hubbard of UC Davis. He pondered his own view of the water from his charter seats in Section 317, behind home plate.

Robinson got together with a couple of computer simulation software experts, and …
Together, they analyzed the key factors that account for the distance a batted baseball can reach -- angle and speed of the ball leaving the bat, mostly, but also ambient temperature and the aerodynamic lift produced by backspin. All this data was then loaded into an MSC proprietary computer program, called "Interactive Physics," that was customized for the dimensions and odd outfield angles of SBC Park (Now AT&T Park), including a left-handed Bondsian hitter standing in.

So, what did they learn?

If the program can be believed, a hitter must get the baseball moving at least 105 mph off the bat straight down the right-field line, imparting a strong 1,800 rpm backspin, lifting the ball somewhere between about 30 to 45 degrees, in order to have any real chance of making the water. And that assumes no wind blowing the ball back toward home plate or toward the deepest part of the outfield, which often seems to be the case at SBC (AT&T) Park.

Sharply hit line drives -- a speed of 130 mph and a 15 degree angle -- smash into the outfield bricks. Lofty fly balls hit steeper than 45 degrees can reach an impressive 150-200 feet in elevation above the outfield, but unless they are hit at maximum velocity, which seems unrealistic for such a steep angle, they tend to fall back well short of the cove.

Practically any ball hit toward the gap in right-center, where the wall stands 365 feet from home plate, is doomed to stay dry. Even a 120-mph screamer hit an optimum angle of 42 degrees won't make it without a near- maximum boost from backspin.

That explains the physics behind launching the stitched-up spheroid (I said spheroid, not steroid. Bonds fans tend to get a little uncomfortable when you mention the ladder.), but there really isn't any information concerning the atmospheric conditions that may come into play except for a brief mention of wind blowing off the bay. I'm sure that explains much, but we also need to take in account altitude and humidity.

Further Googling turned up nothing about atmospheric conditions at AT&T, but I did find an interesting article from the Pittsburgh's Post-Gazette. The story was published in 2001 when the Pirates opened PNC Park, and its writer, Chuck Finder, asked similar questions about the Pirates new pad. Finder's article did investigate atmospheric conditions and he wrote about the chances of what he called an Alleghany Splashdown at PNC.

Pittsburgh ranks second in the NL to the Mile High City in altitude, even if we're some 5,100 feet behind Denver. The North Side home to PNC Park is roughly 730 feet above sea level. In baseball, this translates to a 1- to 1.5-percent increase in home-run distance. "So that's as much as 6 more feet for a ball hit around 440," (John) Pastier (of the Society of American Baseball research) said.

Humidity helps homers, too. The air, although it doesn't feel it to us, is lighter for baseball air travel. So the sticky summer here translates to another foot increase in distance.

Finally, there's the variable of wind. The Pirates commissioned in 1999 a wind study that showed breezes around PNC Park would travel from left field to right, up to 15 mph. Such a blow could amount to a decent tailwind. "That could add several feet," Pastier said.

Finder added this about wind coming into play at both the San Francisco and Pittsburgh ballparks:

You might think San Francisco would have a windy advantage over Pittsburgh. But the Giants constructed their park in such a way that it served to mitigate the wind, although sometimes 2 to 10 mph breezes would curl around the right-field-line seats and sneak into play in that short-porch corner.

Notes: Perhaps Carlos Delgado has been studying up on his physics and knows all about the physical mechanics behind achieving the Splash Hit. Of the 14 visiting team home runs to splash down into McCovey Cove, three have been hit Delgado, including the last two and both were hit off Matt Morris. …The Giants web site features a listing of each Spash Hit, and includes video of each hit by a San Francisco player. ...Splash, Starring Daryl Hannah and Tom Hanks, was a hit in 1984. …Below is video from YouTube of Gary Faselli after he caught a Bonds' home run while boating in McCovey Cove in April.

Rain Halts Hawkeyes Win Streak

The Iowa Hawkeyes baseball team is soaring, winning their last 12 consecutive games. Rain, however, grounded the team this Sunday and prevented the team from further extending its winning streak. The series finale with rival Indiana was canceled on Sunday when storms hit Banks Field with the Hawkeyes leading 1-0. The game will not be made up. This from the Daily Iowan:

Instead of runs around the bases, the Hawkeyes raced makeshift boats in puddles in front of their dugout. Rather than stolen base slides, director of baseball operations Matt Haddy dove across the slick tarp covering the infield after an almost two-hour rain delay.

Richmond Rain Pushes Race To Sunday

NASCAR got all wet Saturday night in Richmond and had to postpone its Crown Royal 400 until Sunday. Jet dryers were used to prepare the track's surface after rain fell before the start on the race on the Richmond International Raceway. However, threatening skies gave way to a downpour leading to the postponement after only 12 low-speed laps. Some cars nearly slid off the track before the action was halted. I'm not much of a NASCAR fan, but I hear that Jimmie Johnson won the race on a dry track Sunday.

Juan Pablo Montoya is not used to rain delaying races, The News & Advance out Lynchburg, Va., reports. Montoya came over to NASCAR this year after running on the Formula 1 circuit, where races are not stopped because of rain, but rather racing slicks are exchanged for grooved rain tires.

"Probably the best story is when half the field in Formula One wrecked in the same corner in Brazil. When was that, like 2003? It was raining hard, but there was like a river coming across the track," Montoya said.

Weekend Baseball Delays
I love photos of grounds crews working their tarp magic at the ol' ballpark. Above is an AP photo of the crew members at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City removing the tarp after heavy rain delayed the start of the Royals' game with Detroit by 26 minutes. The Tigers won 13-4. (AP Photo/Dick Whipple). The first pitch of the Reds game with the Colorado Rockies Saturday night at the Great American Ballpark was delayed by 61 minutes.

Tennis Action On The Skids
Who knew there was a Steffi Graf Stadium? I guess a lot of people in Germany know of its existence, but today was the first I, a Steffi fan, had heard about it. Anyway, the Getty Images photo above shows fans waiting through a rain delay on the opening day of the Qatar German Open. Nothing exciting here, but it does give me a chance to mention Steffi on The Rainout Blog. …Justine Henin defeated Alona Bondarenko 6-1, 6-3 Monday to win her second J&S Cup title after rain postponed Sunday's action for a day.

SPRINKLES: A high school baseball tournament in Illinois scheduled to begin last Friday was postponed a day because of tornado warnings and a visible funnel cloud that appeared near the ballpark. "I've never been tornadoed out," said Mike Waldo, pitching coach of the host team Edwardsville Tigers. The twister appeared just as the visiting team was taking infield practice. …A writer for OutlookIndia.com is asking why the recent rain-plagued cricket World Cup was not played in February and March when weather in the Caribbean has less humidity and rain.

Weather Term of the Day:
TORNADO ALLEY -- A geographic corridor in the United States which stretches north from Texas to Nebraska and Iowa. In terms of sheer numbers, this section of the United States receives more tornadoes than any other.

Why a blog about baseball rain delays? Why not?

This may be the most meaningless blog in the blogosphere, but I’ve decided to combine two of my many interests – baseball and weather, specifically rain – into one blog. Why? I’m not sure, but it sounds like fun, to me, the only person who reads this nonsense. Baseball rain outs and rain delays have always fascinated me. When I worked as a sports information director, one of my favorite stories to write was the baseball rain out story. Maybe, too, rain on baseball diamonds subconsciously reminds of growing up in the 80s and watching re-runs of the Andy Griffith Show with my Papaw during rain delays of Atlanta Braves games on WTBS. Those were great times.