Good luck to everyone going to Wrigley this evening, my thoughts and prayers are with you. Cold is one thing but cold combined with wind sucks anal vapors.

Its a SB Nation tradition here in Cincy to attend the 2nd game of the season, which is always a night game two days after Opening Day. The tickets are easy to get and the ballpark is rarely half full. Three years ago was the coldest I have ever been in a ballpark . I definitely feel for the folks going to the game tonight. Brrrrrrrr!

attending a Cubs game in. Miserable for fans and players alike. And yet later in the week it was sunny and near 70 degrees. Sigh. It’s a crapshoot unless you play in a covered stadium.

because it is apparent that baseball will not make any compromises. They want the extra revenue, and won’t pay employees more, so they won’t shorten the season, or have double headers. What if they charged 1.5 times the normal price for tickets to DH? This would avoid some of the extra cost for labor without double admission. Plus most teams would benefit with more ticket sales, people would love going to a DH. The only teams that would suffer would be the ballparks that would be able to sell out those 2 games, like the Cubs.
Even simpler would be if every new ballpark had to have a retractable roof. If that rule was in place for the past five years, Cards, Reds, Pirates, Mets, Yankees, Phillies, Nationals, (going off memory here so my list isn’t perfect), would all have no issues with weather, ever. Add the Twins to the list of crappy places to play for 2 months of the season starting next year.
Bud made what $16 million last year? Why?

…so the lesser-evil proposal would be day-night DH’s. Scheduling must be more thought out than today. Perhaps even the way the teams are scheduled against non-divisional teams must be re-thought. There may even need to be re-alignment.

I don’t have the solution at-hand but this is the only way to solve the issue of early/late season weather.

Simpler things to help for some – but not all – seasons is when a cold weather outdoor team plays a dome team, the games should be in the dome. Last year the Cubs hosted Milwaukee to open the season; not smart. This season the BoSox hosted the Rays; again not smart.

…(or FLA), just extend their time at their Spring Training facility. Wait, then people will bitch about the hot days in AZ & FLA. The solution is to dress accordingly if you are attending the game. When the 1 Million mark was the bar of achievement for season attendance this was not a big issue because no one went to the games at this time of the season. Just tough it out, you’ll have a good story to tell later.

to schedule games in those cities least likely to have crap weather in April and May. Some logarythm (sp) to figure out how to make sure that fans don’t freeze.

That said, I am going to the game tonight, and for the first time in a long time, I am not looking forward to it at all. I’m gonna bundle up and hope Harden throws a lot of strikes.

April tickets for their new park should come with a first aid kit.

not only has it been much colder than usual, it seems like it cannot go three days without raining on the eastern seaboard!

….when they receive a huge black eye, like a world series being postponed a couple days.

The MLB is never proactive, but reactive.

To me:

1. shorten the season by at least two weeks
2. start the spring games in the south or domed parks exclusively
3. cut the gap between the end of the season and the postseason
4. rotate the location of the WS to warm parks or one’s with domes

This messes many things up including baseball’s most sacred – tradition – but as these seem the most pragmatic.

Seating capacity is less but it’s fairly equal for all teams. Plus I would get to see Cubs games that count!

what are the chances that we actually get to see baseball today?

Remember this when the wind is howling, the rain is piercing, and the snow is confusing.

You get to watch baseball at Wrigley Field.

Remember this when many of your bretheren are watching WGN, reading “in play, run(s),” or groaning at ESPNs “commentary.”

You get to watch baseball at Wrigley Field.

tonight at Wrigley will feel like a sauna!

Dusty leaves Owings out there for tonight in the miserable weather…108.

I take the over.

I talked about the weather implications of Minnesota’s roof-less stadium here.. This is going to happen in states like MN, WI, IL, MA, WA, but not very often. Baseball is effectively played in 4 seasons.

I’d LOVE to have some of that weather over here in Southern California.
It’s been in the mid to upper 90 for the last 3 days!

Standing to the left of the guy in the brown coat in the foreground. We drove from Bloomington, were in line ten minutes when they called it…and of course, no refunds on parking lol

light rain falling, has been all day.

No break in gray sky as far west as you can see from the 20th floor.

However, precip appears almost out per tribune weather radar.

Players’ parking lot is about half-full. Looked to be about 30-35 people lined up by the bleacher entrance; didn’t see any fans waiting in front of other gates. Lots of employees walking around inside as well as heading into work. Vendors were lined up too, waiting to get in.

While waiting for traffic light at Sheffield & Addison, a bunch of fans crossed in front of me coming from the El station. Obviously their first game this year because they were surprised to see the Joe Morgan Club pancake house in front of them. All the guys were saying stuff like “what’s this shit?”, “what a joke”, and the obligatory “Arrrrgh”. And all the girls were “Ooooh – it’s so cute!”, “Cool”, and “Can we go in there now?”.

Now that’s market research… ;-)

Bad Cub weather is still nowhere near bad Bear weather- so the fans should suck it up! Football and baseball are different games, though, and you can’t play baseball when its pouring rain like you can football. Still, the fan experience is similar- sitting on metal bleachers or bucket seats and freezing your tail off.

When I look at games like the opening day win- the weather seemed to be like home field advantage. The players appreciate fans coming out and freezing for them, and I think they play hard in bad weather. As long as the home teams win the majority of their awful and rainy home games we should chalk that up as a partial factor in obtaining the win.