Cubs, Pirates postponed due to snow

The Cubs, Pirates and the rest of the city of Chicago woke Monday to a wintry scene more reminiscent of Christmas than baseball season.

About an inch of snow covered grassy areas around the north side, including the field at Wrigley — see above.

The Cubs tried very hard to play Monday’s opener — at first pushing the starting time back an hour to 2:20 CT, but eventually, had to postpone the game:

The snow has mostly stopped in the Chicago area at this point, but as you can see by the photo in the @Cubs tweet, the field likely couldn’t have been cleared to make it safe for play, so the Cubs likely made the right call. A few hundred fans were waiting around various entrances to Wrigley Field when the game was called. I can report to you that it was quite cold and breezy, not good baseball conditions even if they could have cleared the field.

1:20 CT Tuesday is the new starting day and time, and now you see the reason for scheduling an off day after the home opener in cold-weather cities. The Cubs are the third team to have to postpone their home opener this year; the Tigers and Reds also had to call off their openers and play them the next day.

This is the first home opener at Wrigley to be postponed since 2003, which I wrote about earlier this morning. That game was also called due to snow.

Some Cubs players took advantage of the snow to have some fun:

For guys like Javier Baez and Jose Quintana, who grew up in places where snow is never seen, this was probably a fun diversion before baseball starts up at Wrigley Tuesday.

No pitchers have been announced yet for Tuesday’s game, but I would guess Tyler Chatwood and Ivan Nova, Monday’s scheduled starters, will go tomorrow.

Enjoy the rest of your afternoon! Hope you’re spending it in a warm place.