Heavens can't wait!

Associated Press

Have you ever had one of those moments – pre-DVR, of course – where you had to run off from to the television during a baseball game to… um, take care of important business? You wanted to get through one more batter – your team is playing a rival in an important series – but you just couldn’t wait.

That’s relatable, I think, to the happenings in Detroit Sunday night. In a 1-1 tie, Miguel Cabrera came to the plate in the bottom of the ninth with his Tigers in 1-1 tie with the Royals.

That’s when it happened. The skies couldn’t hold it any longer.

Rain delayed the game for an hour and 43 minutes, pushing the contest well past midnight and making me even more sleep deprived. When the game resumed, the homestanding Tigers loaded the bases with no outs in the ninth, but failed to produce a run. The Royals grabbed a run in the top of the 10^th and hung on for a 2-1 series-clinching win over its American League Central rivals.

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Wild, Rainy (and not so rainy) Night

I hate admit this, but I saw no baseball yesterday. Blame it on the rain. (That's so cheesy. Sorry.)

When I got home from work, the Giants and Cardinals had already slipped into what would become a three-and-a-half-hour rain delay – the delay actually lasted longer than the game.

My wife and I are remodeling our bedroom, and when I finished painting the closet and installing light switch and outlet covers, the rain had stopped and the Cards had grabbed a 2-1 series lead.

In the American League, you all know by now that the Yankees, who are benching everyone these days, and the Tigers were rained out… sort of. Actually, it was the threat of rain that postponed Game 4, and possibly lengthened the hapless, hitless Yankees' season by a day. Today's game, which should have been Game 5, gets started at 4:07 p.m. From what I've heard and read, the ballpark was dry when the game was called at 9:15 p.m. Rain eventually hit the ballpark around 10 p.m., where it rained for about an hour.

Forecasters say that the wet stuff will be long gone from Detroit before today's Yankees-Tigers tilt. The NLCS Game 4 is scheduled for tonight in St. Louis, where it will be, according to forecasters, cloudy and cool with a low around 45 degrees with a chance of a spot shower or sprinkles. That forecast doesn't seem much to worry about, right?

Sprinkles

MLB.com has a story about the Cards-Giants rain delay, complete with Giants skipper Bruce Bochy talking about the delay.

The St. Louis Post Dispatch has some cool pics of a lot of wet fans in Busch Stadium last night… lots of umbrellas, which I love but never use. I love the image showing the weather radar on the ballpark's giant screen.

As a Nationals fan, I'm a bit sick of writing about the Cardinals participation in the playoffs, so let's move on to the Yanks and Tigers…

FanGraphs has a story detailing how Wednesday's postponement in Detroit could play havoc with the Yankees rotation and further damage the team's already dismal chances.

The Tigers have been through this playoff rain delay thing before… last year, and Max Scherzer is cool with it.

Not so cool with the rain out was this fella, who checked out his grandfather from a nursing to take him to Comerica Park for the game.

Not to be outdone by the Post-Dispatch, the Detroit Free Press has photos from the not-so-rainy night accompanying a Mitch Albom column. I love Mitch.

Speaking of sports writers I love, Tim Kirkjian took to Twitter during the delays to discuss his top 10 sitcom characters of all time.

Rain Could Doom Tigers - Yankees Finale

It's rainy at Comerica Park today where the Detroit Tigers are scheduled to host the New York Yankees at 1:05 p.m. A 60 percent chance of rain is forecasted for Detroit today.

I'll be away from The Rainout Blog Headquarters this afternoon, so you may want to follow the Tigers on Facebook and/or Twitter for updates. I'm so lazy.

By the way, the photo with this post is from the Tigers Facebook page. Thanks, guys, for letting my borrow it.

UPDATE: First pitch has been pushed back to 1:35 p.m. because of rain. Do Detroit TV stations show episodes of The Andy Griffith Show during rain delays?

No Streaking in the Rain

Justin Verlander failed to pitch past the sixth inning Tuesday for the first time in his past 63 starts.

Why? Blame it on the rain… and perhaps the Red Sox.

The Detroit pitcher had lengthy innings in the first and fourth, tossing 31 and 35 pitches in those frames, respectively.

He gave up four runs in the fourth, and that was all the Red Sox needed to take a rain-shortened 4-1 over the Tigers' ace at Fenway Park.

After the game, Verlander didn't blame precipitation for his woes:

“I was able to keep my hand pretty dry,” he said. “The only area it affects you is when you start throwing a little bit harder. (Your foot) lands in a (new) area. I was slipping a little bit. That’s why the ball was elevated. It became pretty difficult for me to throw a strike.”

By the way, if you want to check out photos of the rainy night's action, the Boston Herald has a neat gallery, mostly of Red Sox players, of course.

Wet Sox

The White Sox game with the Cubs, as you already know, was rained out on Tuesday, but the coolest baseball rain delay photo from the past week is this AP snapshot of the Sox grounds crew as they squeegee water from the tarp covering the field during a rain delayed game between the Pale Hose and the Tigers.

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.