About Geoff Expertise Huge baseball trivia lover! I will attempt to answer anything you can think of when it comes to major league baseball. I have a large reference library of all things baseball. Try to stump me!
Question We were discussing sports tonight and the questions came up regarding rain delays, etc. Other games, i.e. football, are played even during a downpour. My question is: Why is a games suspended when it rains? And, why do they cover the field AFTER IT HAS GOTTEN RAINED ON????
It makes no sense to me .... is there a fast rule or is it just something that has always been done??? WHY???
Answer Hi Joyce,
Thanks for writing.
Baseball players are sometimes criticized for not being as "tough" as football players who play in the rain/ snow/ sleet. The main difference though, is that baseball is the only sport where the defense controls the ball.
If a football team is playing in bad weather, it often changes its offense to have more running plays since passing in the rain can be difficult for the receivers. A batter in baseball needs to be able to see the ball clearly when he is at bat. If someone was throwing a baseball 100 miles an hour within inches of my head, I'd want to be sure I could see it as clearly as possible. That's why the umpires stop the games - for safety reasons. Similarly in golf they stop when lightning is in the area because you don't want to be swinging a metal club in a lightning storm.
Baseball fields - especially infields - drain extremely well. They have lots of sand under the grass to keep puddles from forming. The infield gets covered so that the rain under the cover has time to drain off without more rain taking its place on the surface.
