TDA Bullpen - Our Writers' Blog

Saturday, September 04, 2004

Blown Away

Poor Emergency Planning on MLB's Part

Today's game between the Marlins and the Cubs, scheduled for Miami, has been cancelled, as was yesterday's, due to Hurricane Frances. The Sunday game is still on, but it seems a dubious prospect that even if conditions allow the game to be played, anybody who's just survived a Category 4 storm is going to be in the mood to go to the ballpark.

This has the makings of a major disaster for baseball, because the Marlins and Cubs are battling one another for the NL wildcard spot, and anything short of a four-game lead in the loss column by one club or another will force the make-up of all of these games. Making up an entire three-game series in September is almost impossible. The Cubs have a grand total of two days off until the end of the season; the Marlins also have only two (one of them, ludicrously, the labor day Monday holiday. The one common free date is September 20; the Marlins will be in the middle of a homestand, and the Cubs will be between road series in Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, so it looks like a Monday triple-header is in the works.

Of course that's absurd: the players wouldn't agree to it, the teams would balk at the loss of revenue. But it's equally absurd that major league baseball continues to construct its schedule year after year with potential disasters in it. The insistence that teams make up games at their home parks, largely because of revenue, is short-sighted when make-ups have to be sandwiched on Mondays in September when school's in session and nobody's going to come, anyway.

There was one exception this year: the Traveling Expos had to make up a "home" game at San Francisco last month when an appropriate date for a rained out game in San Juan couldn't be found at one of the Expos' several home parks, but major league baseball was willing to pass on the home gate since the road share at SBC would be better than the home share at either of the Expos' homes. Expos' management sure wasn't going to object, and the players' union just wanted to avoid two 10-hour plane trips for the Giants in the middle of a homestand sometime. But the poor Expos weren't even allowed the advantage of playing in the bottom of the inning, as they were forced to be the visitors for a "home" game ; the 2004 Giants will be the only team in major league history with 82 home games in a regular season.

One senses there's a feeling that, well, you can't predict the weather and you can't fight acts of God like hurricanes. But that's absurdly incorrect. If you put a team in Miami or St. Pete, you know for sure some games will be cancelled due to hurricanes. You don't know what year, but it's a certainty it will happen eventually. (Maybe baseball is just taking the same head in the sand, somebody-will-bail-us out attitude of Florida homeowners who build in hurricane alley in the first place.) And it's also a certainty it will happen late in the season, because that's when hurricane season comes up. All the domes in the world aren't going to make the game playable with 150 MPH winds outside.

Yet major league baseball continues to make full schedules in September for both Florida teams, and has only a one-day buffer between the end of the regular season and the scheduled start of the playoffs. Despite the fact that on a couple of seasons in the wiild-card era it's nearly become a necessity to have multiple play-off games to determine the wild card, MLB hasn't fixed this part of the schedule, but instead introduced some tie-breaking rules worthy of the NFL or maybe a penalty-kick shootout for a World Cup soccer game.

It's not just the weather MLB isn't prepared for: it's any unforeseen contingency. Wrigley Field may or may not be falling apart, yet there's no contingency plans for how to make up the rest of the season -- and possibly the post-season -- should the ballpark be shut down by the City of Chicago. Presumably at least Comiskey/Cellular One field could be made available for some games, but not every city has the luxury of two parks available. Remember the greatest road trip of all time -- the 1991 Montreal Expos' 28-game unscheduled and nearly random tour of North America? It was caused by the structural problems at the Big O that caused it to be closed for emergency repairs.

Stuff happens. Earthquakes, construction problems, chemical tanks exploding, and yes, Virginia, the weather happens. You can't predict when, but you can say for sure that something unexpected will happen.

There are some obvious reforms to suggest here:

• Schedule fewer games in September. Attendance drops off, anyway, particularly among non-playoff-contending teams. School's back in session, it's colder, it rains more everywhere except California. In general the schedule could use more time in September for make-ups, so why not also end the season a week early, and take a week off before the play-offs? That way there's a block of time for any make-ups necessary to determine the playoff teams. (One salutary side effect of that would be to allow all playoff clubs to rest their rotations, so all teams have an equal footing going into the post-season.)
  
  
• Pre-arrange "Neutral Site" venues. All of Florida is off-limits right now, Atlanta may be affected by the hurricane. If a hurricane goes ashore on the Mid-Atlantic coast, Baltimore, Philly, and New York would all be unable to host games. If there's a blizzard in April, Denver and the entire upper midwest might be unable to hold games. Why not pick out a handful of cities capable of hosting major league games in advance, in different parts of the country, and pre-arrange "contingency game" dates? That way the games could be played at the time they're scheduled, and make-ups for anything but the occasional rain-out wouldn't become the scheduling nightmares they are. If a few cities without major league teams could be lined up, that would also allow MLB to test-market baseball in a few cities for potential moves or future expansion. Say the Pirates and Marlins are likely to be rained out. Why not play a few games in Nashville, a growing city with a nice AAA park? Or have the Yankees and Mets go to Buffalo, one of the best-drawing minor league parks in history?
  
  
• Require each team to develop an emergency plan for its own home games should the stadium be unavailable. Emergency planning is done by most businesses (especially following 9/11), and certainly by every organ of government in this country, so why major league teams seem to have no clue about what to do when something unexpected comes up is beyond me.
  
  
• Take their heads out of the sand and do some planning in general.
  

Blame the hurricane on mother nature. Blame the falling chunks of concrete on some tired contractor back in the winter of 1912. Blame God for that power outage in the seventh inning in a tie game. But don't be caught unprepared. "Stuff" happens and good management and leadership anticipates the unexpected.

posted by The Crank 8:25 AM