Diamonds and Downpours: When Baseball Meets Monsoon Season
Diamonds and Downpours: When Baseball Meets Monsoon Season
By: George V. Howe
As many of you know, I am a youth baseball coach to my son Nolan and his merry band of misfits. And the way this year is going, I’m going to add “meteorologist” to my title. For the record, if it rains this Saturday, it will mark the 13th straight Saturday of rain. There are few forces on Earth more powerful than Mother Nature: earthquakes, hurricanes, a toddler missing nap time? But perhaps her most mightiest of weapons is the youth baseball rain delay, where chaos reigns, logic goes on vacation, and 12 year-olds become part-time weather forecasters and full-time mud wrestlers.
Most of our Saturdays have started and ended the same way. The parents begin driving into our Mattakeesett Street complex full of optimism, folding chairs, and sunscreen, and most of the time I can smell the kids freshly laundered uniforms all the way from the dugout. I have to admit, I giggle a little bit knowing that, in a few short minutes, they’ll be climbing back into the backseat of their parents SUV covered in mud. Typically us coaches give a rousing speech about teamwork and hustle, which 85% of the team ignores in favor of asking where the sunflower seeds are and if they heard about “Jimmy” getting suspended for pantsing someone after 5th grade Algebra on Friday. And then... the clouds roll in. Slowly. Menacingly. And from here there are a series of events more predictable than the rain.
The denial phase. Listen, I love all of our parents, but I never really appreciated how many of them worked for The Weather Channel. The iPhone weather apps come out quick and lead the conversations: “looks like it’s just passing to the North”, or “nope, this is definitely clearing”, “says 30% chance of precipitation (while it’s raining sideways, by the way)”. No one knows what’s happening, but they do know one thing: we already paid the league fees, so we are getting at least one inning out of this!
And then the great deluge. I know we’ve all seen rain before but for some reason this season has rained like someone up there is dropping buckets of Gatorade directly and purposely on our fields. Only our fields. Not the fields in Hanover. Duxbury. Or Kingston. Just ours. But the panic is real. Our parents scramble and take refuge under their tent, protecting younger siblings, and of course keeping the Dunkin’ Donuts coffee out of the rain. The kids? Oh, they love it. It’s a party. They slide through the infield mud like it's a backyard slip 'n slide on the Fourth of July.
Of course, inevitably, there’s the aftermath. As families pack up and squelch their way back to their cars, the rain stops. Birds chirp. A rainbow appears over the outfield fence like Mother Nature's way of saying, “I regret nothing, you just rent space in my living room.” The field is a swamp. The dugouts are tiny lakes. The only thing drier than the pitcher's mound is everyone's patience. But somehow, spirits are still high.
Because this is youth baseball. Where every rain delay is part of the story.
