A movie called “The Fan” came out in 1996, starring Robert DeNiro as a psycho baseball fan and Wesley Snipes as a smug San Francisco Giant.
There were a number of reasons to find this film annoying. but the one that stood out was a Giants game that was played in a terrible, torrential rain.
As sure as “there’s no crying in baseball,” audiences knew one thing—no Major League Baseball game would be played in a blinding, driving downpour.
Not ever, ever, ever.
A drizzle, OK. A light shower, sure.
But in that stupid movie, Snipes and friends played ball in a storm that looked like one of those Category 5 things you see on the Weather Channel.
The director, an Englishman, took quite a bit of flak for this swingin’-in-the-rain scene.
Twelve years later, though, “The Fan” suddenly doesn’t seem absurd at all.
I watched Game 5 of the 2008 World Series on television Monday night and had to wipe my own eyes. That’s because I couldn’t believe what I saw.
A bunch of chilled Philadelphia Phillies and Tampa Bay Rays, some in caps with earflaps, were forced to play a game of monumental importance on a night not fit for man or beast. (Or whatever that Phillies mascot is.) it rained so hard, a flight attendant should have given instructions on how to use each of the bases as a flotation device.
It was ludicrous.
Johnstown, Pa., didn’t have this much rain in 1889 during the flood.
It was also dangerous.
Jimmy Rollins is small. he is lucky he didn’t go swirling down a drain. I thought that’s where he was headed, in fact, when the Phillies’ shortstop tried to catch a pop fly. Rollins staggered around like a drunken student on spring break. he couldn’t have caught that ball with a fireman’s net.
Gilligan wouldn’t have gone for a three-hour tour on a day like this. Ben Franklin would have been too frightened to fly his kite. I bet there were U.S. mail carriers in Philadelphia who refused to make deliveries. Hail or sleet, OK, but not this junk.
And yet the big brains of baseball had a brainstorm—let’s go ahead and try to get a World Series game in.
I can picture them now, looking at Doppler radar screens and saying: “It’ll clear up.” Yeah, right—that’s what Noah probably thought.
Batters got buffeted from both sides like SUVs in a car wash. Fielders sloshed through puddles. Umpires trembled in the October cold and drowned like rats. (At least the players got to go into dugouts once in a while.)
The longer I saw Cole Hamels try to pitch for the Phils, the more concerned I became that he was about to slip off the mound and fall into a sinkhole. I felt he would have been totally justified in asking what baseball’s rule book has to say about a pitcher wearing a scuba mask and flippers.
And I particularly began to feel pity for the poor Rays, who hail from sun-kissed Florida and feel at home in a dome. in his black-rimmed spectacles and his Elmer Fudd hunting cap, their manager, Joe Maddon, resembled someone who was on an expedition to the North Pole.
It was underwater baseball, America’s new extreme sport.
What a shame that Game 5 couldn’t have been played instead that night inside a dome, which Philadelphia was too cheap to build. (Like some other cities we could name.)
Or, better yet, in Los Angeles, which was 80 degrees Monday and dry.
I don’t know if it is ever sunny in Philadelphia, but because baseball refuses to let its big games be played in the sunshine, the teams returned Wednesday night to Citizens Bank Swamp with the intent to continue Game 5, roughly 48 hours after it began.
Bud Selig probably brought with him a gigantic red umbrella like the one in those Travelers Insurance commercials on TV. I have no quarrel with the commissioner, but some of these decisions this guy makes, man, he makes Cloris Leachman seem lucid.
It is bad enough that this has been the most poorly umpired World Series of this century—and possibly last century too.
Hamels’ uncalled balk in Game 1, Rollins’ uncalled hit-by-pitch and Rocco Baldelli’s checked swing in Game 2, Carl Crawford’s safe call in Game 3, Evan Longoria’s tag of Rollins in a rundown in Game 4 … the umps have called this entire Series as if they all had rain in their eyes.
And the TV ratings have been so poor, some people obviously would prefer to watch a rainout than Phillies vs. Rays.
I was glad not to be there. give me a rain check and wake me when it’s 2009.
mikedowney@tribune.com
A flood of criticism for baseball's handling of Game 5
Spring fever has struck the College at Brockport campus. Thankfully, spring break is sooner than later.
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