THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, August 5, 1994 TAG: 9408050704
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TOM ROBINSON, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Long : 130 lines
Assistant groundskeeper Marc Rosenfield slogged out of the visitor's bullpen - home plate was somewhere under all that water and mud - at Harbor Park late Tuesday afternoon with a dry idea concerning the drenched earth.
``Know what we should do?'' Rosenfield shouted to head groundskeeper Kenny Magner.
Sure, Magner knew. ``Besides get other jobs, you mean?'' he said.
The rain had momentarily gone away, but Magner knew it would come again, surely on another day, and from those black clouds gathered to the southwest, almost certainly within the hour.
Which meant there was a 90 percent chance that this, finally, would be the one. The one that would get them. The one that even Harbor Park's techno-marvelous drainage system couldn't hold off any longer.
The Big Bang.
It only seems like it rained enough in July to float an ark. Nearly 15 inches, a July record, were enough to flood downtown streets, flush backyard gardens and create general highway havoc. But they could not keep the Norfolk Tides from their 12 appointed rounds at Harbor Park.
None of their dozen July games were rained out, or ``banged'' in ballplayer lingo. This might be one of the Triple-A team's most impressive statistics of the season.
Seven games had their first pitch delayed. One had play halted for an hour, and most of one was played in something more than a drizzle but less than a torrent. The others were somehow squeezed in before more anti-baseball atmospheric activity smote the park.
``If we were still at Met Park,
we would've lost all of July,'' Magner said one recent afternoon in his hutch inside the leftfield corner of Harbor Park, waiting out more rain.
A slight exaggeration, maybe. But tell that to a barometric-pressure-reading, cold-front-comprehending fellow with a veritable lifeline to the Weather Channel.
``I tell the kids, `I don't care if you're watching ``Scooby Doo,'' the weather's on,' '' Magner said, working an invisible channel zapper with his thumb. ``I have to get mentally prepared for the day.''
Flawless preparation, intensive work by Magner, Rosenfield and part-timers Keith Collins and Justin Nixon, and plenty of luck got the Tides through July. August, though, succeeded on its first attempt to wash out a game.
Tuesday's contest became just the third postponement this season when pregame rain, a rotten, leaking tarp and more rain at game time left the infield a sea of muck.
With Harbor Park's drainage system, it essentially needs to rain at game time and beyond to force a postponement. For the most part, July's rains hit in early afternoon, Magner said. That was excellent timing because the grass could be mowed daily to facilitate drainage, and the tarp, such as it is, could be placed over the infield.
However, the 4-year-old tarp, a frayed relic from Met Park, was a culprit. When it was removed, parts of the infield were so mushy, it appeared as though they had been exposed for much of the afternoon.
Frantic field work ensued for about an hour. It was in vain when another thunderstorm hit so hard, the tarp wasn't even replaced. That canceled a paid gate of more than 9,000 fans, all of whom can use their tickets as a rain check.
That's agony for management, general manager Dave Rosenfield said. That, and ``watching your staff just get run down,'' are the worst things about constant rain.
Front-office employees pull tarp duty during the day and also help during rain delays at night.
``On and off, on and off,'' Rosenfield said. ``It's not just the physical thing - most of them are young and can handle it. But there's kind of a stress to it.''
While the grounds crews pull the tarp, rake, shovel, sweep and dump drying compound all over the place, card games break out in the players' clubhouse. Doesn't look too stressful in here.
Starting pitchers bear the brunt of rain delays. Rain messes up routines, and a starter's preparation is more regimented than that of a regular player. Outdoor batting practice can be replaced with work in indoor hitting tunnels.
``The pitcher is so anxious to go out there and throw his first pitch,'' pitching coach Bob Apodaca said. ``He's the initiator of the whole ballgame. Position players, they're the counter-punchers. They just react to what happens.''
It started to rain like crazy during last Friday's game. Magner and his tarp crew, more than a dozen, including some ushers, were revved at the end of the visitor's dugout, stacked up, waiting for those words - ``Cover it!'' - from the umpire.
The signal came. Everybody ran for the tarp. Get the field covered now, worry about hamstrings later.
And it's no easy chore, this tarp business. Rolling out, unfolding and dragging a 165-by-165-foot protective covering in split-second time just so over an infield. Wind and rain in your face. Thousands of people huddled in the concourse or under the roof upstairs following your every move, set to hoot if you screw up or fall down or the wind whips your end of the tarp away.
``I get butterflies,'' Magner said, tapping his chest. ``What I'm trying to do is look like a unit. I hate to see a man wandering.''
The more who wander, the more chance a game might be called because the grounds crew didn't get the field covered in time.
``I don't want the game to be called because of me,'' Magner said. ``Let it be called 'cause the rain didn't quit.''
Dave Rosenfield's sentiments, exactly. Reliability is a vital part of the ticket-buying pact, Rosenfield said. The game must go on.
``You do not want to let people think you're going to be quick to call a game,'' he said. ``You want the public to believe that you're going to do whatever you can to play every time you're scheduled.''
Tuesday pregame, back at the swampy visitor's bullpen, Magner and Marc Rosenfield hooked up a drain pipe to a gas-powered pump and plunked that baby into the slop.
The water was guzzled up and drying compound was spread. Within an hour, miraculously, a Charlotte Knights pitcher was able to throw to a catcher who squatted where before he would've sank up to his shins.
Yet as the water drained, Magner, a veteran of 21 seasons, eyed the storm clouds on the horizon. He sighed and shook his head. He had a feeling that, this time, the salvage work would be for nothing.
``I'm sick of this ----. I'm perturbed,'' Magner said, then he smiled at the irony. ``If this is bothering me, I'm in trouble.''
The rainy season. Sooner or later, it gets to everybody. ILLUSTRATION: COLOR PHOTOS BY RALPH FITZGERALD
Tides groundskeepers, vendors and ushers, above and top, pull the
tarp over the infield at Harbor Park.
Groundskeepers Justin Nixon and Kenny Magner, after the rain.
by CNB