The Rain Delay: A Survival Guide
The field is underwater. Your tournament fee is non-refundable. Welcome to Saturday.
The weather app said 20% chance of rain. It has been raining for forty-seven minutes straight. The tournament director is standing in three inches of water explaining why this is just a light sprinkle. Your $400 tournament fee is non-refundable. The hotel is non-refundable. The gas money is already spent. You are watching a 12-year-old try to field ground balls through what is essentially a small lake. Welcome to the rain delay. Population: everyone who did not check the extended forecast.
The Optimistic Tournament Director
He has been checking his weather app every thirty seconds for the past hour. Looks like it is moving through, he announces to a parking lot full of people whose cars are being pelted by marble-sized hail. The radar shows a solid wall of green and red stretching from here to Oklahoma. Should clear up in about twenty minutes, he says, as a small river forms between home plate and the pitcher mound. He will say this exact phrase every twenty minutes for the next four hours. The field will remain underwater. Physics does not care about your bracket.The Parents Who Refuse to Leave
They have set up a full tailgate operation under a 6x6 pop-up tent currently doing its best impression of a parachute in a hurricane. Mom is still grilling hot dogs. The cooler has two inches of rainwater in it. We drove four hours, Dad explains, as if the weather cares about your mileage. They will stay until someone with actual authority tells them to leave. The tournament director does not count. Their kid is in the car playing Fortnite. He stopped caring about the game an hour ago. He is the smartest person at this tournament.The Weather Experts
Every parent suddenly has a meteorology degree. The wind is shifting from the southwest, announces Karen, who works in accounting and gets her weather from Facebook. That means it will blow over in fifteen minutes. Mike has three weather apps open and is cross-referencing them like he is planning a NASA launch. The Doppler shows a break in the storm at 2:47 PM, he declares. It is currently 11:23 AM. None of them checked the weather before leaving the house this morning. All of them are now experts on barometric pressure.The Kids Who Adapt Immediately
While adults are having heated discussions about drainage and field conditions, the 10-year-olds have started a splash contest in the puddle behind third base. They are having the time of their lives. Your son just caught a frog. He wants to keep it. He has named it Slider. This is somehow the most baseball-related thing that has happened all morning. The teenagers are in someone Suburban watching TikToks. They figured out this was not happening two hours ago. Adults are still debating field conditions.The Equipment Disaster
Someone $300 bat bag is floating. The team mom organizational system of labeled Ziploc bags has become a small-scale environmental disaster. Seventeen Gatorades are bobbing around the dugout like pool toys. The catching gear is making sounds that catching gear should not make. Water and leather do not mix. Neither do water and parents who just spent $400 on a tournament they cannot play. Your kid glove is fine. It has been in the car since the rain started. He has been playing with a frog for two hours and somehow he is the prepared one.The Inevitable Announcement
At 3:47 PM, after six hours of just waiting it out, the tournament director makes the announcement everyone saw coming at 10:30 AM. Due to field conditions, we are postponing until tomorrow. Tomorrow is Sunday. Half the teams live four hours away. The other half have school on Monday. The bracket that took three weeks to make is now completely meaningless. Your hotel checkout was supposed to be this morning. The front desk wants $89 for another night. The tournament director is nowhere to be found.
The Bottom Line: The weather will do what the weather does. Your tournament fee will remain non-refundable. The kids will have more fun in the puddles than they would have had playing baseball. Next time, check the extended forecast. Or do not. The entertainment value of watching adults argue with meteorology is worth the price of admission.
Originally published at Mind & Muscle
Train your mind. Dominate your game.
