Bleacher Creature Feature

#28: Here Comes the Rain Again ... and Again ... and Again

17 September 2002

The twentieth, however, was. Big-time.

But, dagnabbit, it was the last game of our season ticket package -- the last two Sunday games are in Detroit and Baltimore -- and we were going to sit through the whole thing. No matter how wet we got.

And hoo hah, did we get wet. The rain started pouring down in the third inning, and Andy Pettitte obviously was having trouble gripping the ball. The White Sox were having no trouble hitting it, though, as they took a 4-0 lead. The big hit was Miguel Olivo, who hit a homer in his first major-league at-bat, the first person to do that since Marcus Thames did it for the Yankees (off Randy Johnson, no less) earlier this year. They finally called a rain delay in the middle of the third with no outs and two runners on, and we went down with the rest of the bleacher folk to the dry hallways. Well, drier, anyhow. At least the rain wasn't coming down on us, though it was draining down the ramp near us.

The rain tapered off and, since we were soaked anyhow, and we had a small umbrella, we went back out to our seats (where Terri had left her Diet Coke, which was still there). The rain had lightened considerably, and the grounds crew came out to take the tarp off. This was a fascinating process. They grab one end (the end along the first-base line) and, in essence, fold it over, walking across the tarp toward left field, which turns it upside down, and dumps the water out onto the field. (It is a testament to Yankee Stadium's new drainage that they can dump that much water onto the field with no worries.) Then they turn around and flip it right back over by walking back to the first-base line, putting the tarp back where it was over the infield, but without eight tons of water on it. Then they walk partway down and fold it upward toward the second-base line, then do it again so it's the same size as the tarp roll (which can be seen at rest on the first-base side of foul territory).

It was fun to watch, while we reveled in the joys of discovering just how much water our various articles of clothing could retain (denim, for the record, retains a lot), and our foresight in wearing our Yankee caps, which, if nothing else, kept our glasses dry.

The PA people had a fun time, coming up with every rain song they could toss at us, from "Have You Ever Seen the Rain" by Creedence Clearwater Revival to Bruce Springsteen's "Waiting on a Sunny Day," then playing "Here Comes the Sun" by the Beatles when the tarp was cleared.

Pettitte, now able to actually, y'know, grip the ball, proceeded to notch a strikeout and an inning-ending double play.

And then, after days of futility, the Yankee lumber awakened from their slumber. First the slumping Derek Jeter lead off the fourth with a single, which was followed by back-to-back homers by Jason Giambi and Bernie Williams, bringing the score to 4-3. The next inning, Alfonso Soriano hit his 37th home run (he hit his 38th tonight against Tampa Bay while I typed this column) to tie it.

The inning after that, two things happened: another rally, and more rain.

The first rainstorm was one of those intense monsoons that passes through quickly. In fact, when I called my parents (who only live a few miles north of Yankee Stadium), they were stunned when I told them it had lightened up, as it was pouring up at their place. The sun came out for a while, but by the sixth inning, the skies had darkened again.

So, probably, had Jerry Manuel's mood. Giambi, Bernie, and Jorge Posada each singled to load the bases for Robin Ventura. Perhaps nervous that the active leader in grand slams was up with the bases jammed, Mike Porzio then balked in a run and walked Ventura. Manuel brought in Matt Ginter, even as the rain got harder and harder. Ginter threw one pitch, a ball, to Raul Mondesi before the umpires called another delay, and out came the tarp.

This time, we didn't even bother leaving the bleachers. Our clothes, our skin, hell, our bones were wet; it hardly mattered anymore. We had an umbrella to keep out the worst of it out of our faces, and at least at our seats we could sit.

You find out who the real fans are at rain delays. The rain lightened up again, and the guys came out and did the tarp shuffle again. These guys are like a well-oiled machine, man. Most of the 30,000+ had long since given up and left (including the husband of the couple of who sits behind us, though not the wife, amusingly enough), but a bunch of us hung in there. There was a rally going on, after all, and we needed a win after two really embarrassing losses. Notably, the crowd wasn't significantly quieter after the second delay.

The second that Raul stepped back into the batter's box, the skies started to go dark again and the wind kicked up. We started gnashing our teeth. Raul popped out, and Nick Johnson came up. The rain started again. Johnson had a beauty of an at-bat. He got off on the wrong foot, going to 0-2, but then he started fouling balls off, eventually working his way to a 3-2 count. Then, on the eleventh pitch, he clubbed a single to right field, scoring Bernie and Posada, and then Magglio Ordonez kindly threw the ball away, allowing Ventura to score and Johnson to go to second.

Just as the rain looked like it was going to ease up again, it got worse by several orders of magnitude, and before Juan Rivera could even step into the batter's box, a third rain delay was called. One of the crew told us that the umpires had said that a third rain delay would be the last one. It was an official game, and it was 4.30pm. We gave them until almost 5pm, and then decided that there's no way they were going to finish this game, and we went home to peel off our garments and get into some dry clothes.

But hey, we won. We won with offense, which has been sorely lacking of late. And we triumphed over adversity. What more could you ask from the last regular game of the season?

NEXT: Postseason Prognostications

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