What to Do About Baseball?
March 24th, 2009 by nathan joyceI was talking to an Olympic League baseball coach a few weeks ago and we started talking about the weather. Every year, it’s the same thing. The baseball (and fastpitch and tennis) season starts in mid-March, and they have to postpone half the games because of rain.
It’s not as though this is a surprise. The rain in March (and well into April) is a constant. This is more than just an inconvenience. Teams have games stacked up at the end of the season. Chimacum, for example, played six games in seven days (or something close to that) at the end of last year. It turned the end of the season into a crap shoot and the defending Class 1A state champs found themselves out of the playoffs. Often, the end of the season can turn into a war of attrition with the team with the deepest pitching staff wins.
So what to do? Once idea would be to shorten the season. You know, not actually have the spring sports season start the day of the state basketball championships. You could wait a few weeks. I doubt that would be a popular solution, though, and I understand why.
Here’s my idea: Just change the league schedule. Right now, league games are starting as early as the first week of the season. I’d rather see the league slate changed to every team playing each other once (instead of twice) and starting the league season after spring break. Leave March games to non-leaguers, and if it’s too rainy and those games don’t get made up, it’s no big deal.
What are your thoughts?
Scripps Interactive Newspapers Group
March 24th, 2009 at 10:10 pm
Well…one option might be to play in Sequim…they only get about 15 inches of rain a year.
For those who like to play baseball and the fans who like to watch, cutting the game schedule in half doesn’t sound like a good idea.
Another option is to play in the rain… and be ready for a new baseball fun adventure and challenge.
Sort of like a horse race…the mudders do well in the rain..they usually win…
Sharon O’Hara
March 25th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
Go to Field Turf infields
March 25th, 2009 at 5:28 pm
Turf infields are a good idea. Now if we could just find the money…
I just want to clarify to make sure nobody misunderstands what I meant in the above post. I’m not proposing less games. I think it would work well with less league games and more non-league games. Non-league games don’t HAVE to be made up if you run into a pinch. League games have to be made up, which is why we often a bunch of games stacked up at the end of the season.
March 25th, 2009 at 7:02 pm
Like the song says….”And I wonder, still I wonder, who’ll stop the rain?”
It’s going to rain, no matter what is done.