Robservations: Rain falls on tourney parades
Normally, this time of year, your friendly neighborhood sports department is flooded with games.
District tournaments abound, and this little two-man crew usually finds itself with at least three different contests a day to find a way to cover.
This year has been a little different. While we’ve certainly been flooded, this type of flood has our tournament schedules shaken up like Fort Payne, Alabama.
Every day this week, we’ve hit the phones, finding out what’s canceled, what’s still on and what’s going to be rescheduled.
Then, every night this week, we’ve watched Lisa Patton (my personal favorite) and the rest of our midstate meteorologists tell us that it was going to rain — again.
It’s enough to drive you crazy, all this water on the brain. But it’s a fact of newspapering that you just have to deal with: Harsh weather adds stories to the news section, but it absolutely kills the sports page.
So thank goodness for things like indoor tennis facilities, and athletic departments who are willing to spend the better part of their Wednesday with a squeegee in the middle of a soccer field.
Otherwise, it would be an awfully barren sports section gracing your doorstep this morning, gentle reader. And I’d bet all those quality advertisers would be a little up in arms about it.
• Speaking of rain and cancellations, it’s amazing how people’s minds work regarding these types of decisions.
Earlier this week, I heard a funny story — one that I hope doesn’t apply to any of you. But if it does, pay close attention.
A friend of mine at another media outlet here in town, took a phone call recently from a parent who was concerned about the possibility that city league ballgames might be canceled due to the weather.
(First of all, since it rained over 10 inches in three days, rainouts at the ballparks seemed like a no-brainer to me. But I digress.)
Since my friend didn’t have a list of cancellations in front of him at the time he took the call, he honestly told this concerned parent that he wasn’t sure if that night’s games were called off. At that point, the parent leapt off the deep end, explaining how they had called earlier and were told the games were off, and now he was saying he didn’t know. Apparently the sentiment was expressed that a media outlet of that magnitude should know for a fact the status of that night’s little league contests.
The whole thing struck me as hilarious. Why, you ask? For two reasons.
One, if the newspaper, or radio station, or TV station, “should know” if games are on or not, why would you call them twice regarding the same games? Are you afraid they’re running a scam on you, and they’ll be lying in the weeds laughing when you pull up to the ballparks’ empty parking lot?
And secondly, wouldn’t it make more sense to call the Civic Center, or wherever games are played, to find out if they’re canceled?
Trust me, every time it rains during the spring and summer months, someone comes up to Dale or myself and asks the same question: “Are they playing at the (Civic Center, Fairgrounds, Midway, Morrison, etc.) tonight?”
Usually, we don’t even have to leave our office building before we get that query. And when asked, we do what any normal, right-thinking person would do when pondering that same question — we call the people that make that decision, and we find out.
I guess that’s why we make the big friendly neighborhood sports money — our ability to think on our feet like that.