The Detroit Tigers waited.
And waited.
And waited some more.
The Tigers and San Francisco Giants delayed the start of Sunday’s game at 12:38 p.m. due to inclement weather at Comerica Park, ahead of the scheduled 1:10 p.m. first pitch, only to postpone the finale of the three-game series at 6:15 p.m. The game was officially delayed for 5 hours and 5 minutes.
“That was, ‘Hey, I promise you we’re going to play this game no matter what. We’re gonna play it, we’re gonna play it, by the way, we’re not playing,'” said Tigers reliever Tyler Alexander.
“Those words, no matter what, were thrown out a lot,” said fellow reliever Trey Wingenter. “They were false.”
“What we heard was we weren’t going to know for certain until 6 p.m.,” Alexander said. “They told us that at like 12:30 (p.m.). We were like, ‘So, you’re saying in seven hours we’re going to know what we’re doing?'”
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Hindsight is 20/20.
Let’s keep that in mind.
“It was awkward because we’re all sort of amateur meteorologists and predictors of what we can or should do,” Tigers manager A.J. Hinch said, “and we’re all really good at looking back after the fact and saying what we should have done. … We did the best we could with the information that we were all getting, and we were all aligned with what was going on.”
Hinch spent Sunday in the umpires room at Comerica Park meeting with Major League Baseball, Giants manager Gape Kapler and the umpires, all while tentative plans continued to shift as the forecast continued to change. Giants general manager Pete Putila and Tigers president of baseball operations Scott Harris were involved in the discussions, too.
Looking back, the Tigers and Giants could have completed an official game — at least five innings — and because of MLB’s new pitch clock, they might have been able to get nine innings in. There was rain around 1 p.m., but not long after, the sun came out for at least a couple hours. Many fans waited for baseball by sitting in the stands and soaking up the last of the warm weather.
“We got like 10 minutes of rain,” said catcher Eric Haase.
“We never had a start time put in place because we weren’t confident that there was ever going to be a chance to get our guys warmed up, ready and stay the length of time,” Hinch said. “Looking back, you wish you could have warmed up right after the first dousing that came down right around game time.”
The Tigers and Giants planned to start playing around 6 p.m. at Comerica Park.
But the Giants had a signifiant problem on their end.
The Giants needed to fly to Miami on Sunday ahead of a three-game series against the Marlins, beginning Monday. The pilots for that flight, however, would not have been allowed to fly — because of FAA flight time limitations and requirements — if the Giants played a night game at Comerica Park. It’s unclear if the Giants communicated that information to the Tigers and MLB earlier in the process.
“It was terrible,” Giants pitcher Alex Cobb, an MLB Players Association alternate representative, told reporters Sunday evening. “I mean, we’ve been here since 10 a.m. and really no information was given to us. I think that ideally we would have just handled that rain delay early and then played. I know the threat was there, but MLB is making the decision, not us.”
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The players waited in the clubhouse.
The longest rain delay in baseball history was 7 hours and 23 minutes. It happened at Comiskey Park in Chicago on Aug. 12, 1990, for a game between the Chicago White Sox and Texas Rangers.
That game was ultimately postponed.
The Tigers didn’t have to wait that long, but 300 minutes seems like the longest delay in Comerica Park history. The players killed time by watching other baseball games, playing ping-pong, tossing cards, taking naps and joking around with each other.
“We were thinking start around 5 or 6 (p.m.),” said outfielder Matt Vierling. “Once that came around, and we still hadn’t heard much, then we had an idea that it would probably get canceled. We knew that’s when the rain would let up, and it didn’t. We were waiting to hear.”
Another problem created by Sunday’s fiasco revolves around the new balanced schedule, meaning every team plays every other team at least once per year, but without as many games within the division, postponements can be a massive headache depending on the opponent.
The Tigers and Giants weren’t supposed to play again.
The Giants didn’t want to burn an off day traveling to Detroit for one game; the Tigers didn’t want to burn an off day playing. The postponed game, however, has been rescheduled for July 24 at Comerica Park.
The Tigers now play 17 games in a row coming out of the All-Star break.
“(Expletive) 17 games in a row?” one player said.
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As for the fans, the Tigers seemingly did the best they could to accommodate for Sunday’s disaster. They provided four updates: delaying the start of the game, revealing the game would not start before 3 p.m., announcing there would be a 5:15 p.m. meeting, and finally, postponing the game.
The Tigers, after allowing fans to leave and re-enter the ballpark, sent a message to the fans: “We thank the fans for their patience. In the next few days, the Tigers will be reaching out to everyone who was in attendance at Comerica Park during our delay to offer complimentary tickets to a future game.”
One day later, the Tigers postponed Monday’s 6:40 p.m. game against the Cleveland Guardians because of inclement weather. This time, though, the official announcement came before the gates opened, and once again, the Tigers allowed fans to exchange their tickets. Fans with tickets to Tuesday’s 6:40 p.m. game, which turned into a straight doubleheader beginning at 1:10 p.m., were offered an opportunity to claim complimentary tickets.
Free tickets for frustrated fans?
Not a bad way to handle what happened Sunday and Monday.
Still, there wasn’t any baseball at Comerica Park despite potentially playable weather conditions over the past two days, and looking back on the situation, the Tigers and Giants undoubtedly should have played Sunday afternoon.
“Communication-wise with our players, they were all locked in and ready to play,” Hinch said. “We kept telling them after every meeting, ‘We’re gonna play, we’re gonna play, we’re gonna play.’ And then we told them to go home.”
Contact Evan Petzold at epetzold@freepress.com or follow him on Twitter @EvanPetzold.