‘I Thought We Had A Roof’: Marlins all wet following Opening Day rain delay gaffe
Ppd - rain, Issue 1
Welcome to the first edition of “ppd - rain,” the newsletter devoted to stories of sporting events — past and present — impacted by inclement weather. I began writing about this topic years ago. After a break, I decided to start a Substack. I’m beginning with a story I wrote a few years ago about the 2015 rain delay inside the Miami Marlins’ ballpark. It has a retractable roof, you know! If I see there is an interest from readers in stories about sports and weather, I’ll continue to publish more stories. I have plenty of ideas! Thanks for stopping by.
Dee Gordon slipped as he accelerated out of the batter’s box.
The speedy Miami Marlins’ second baseman had just laid down a bunt in an effort to spark a late-game rally. His team trailed the Atlanta Braves, 2-1, in the eighth inning on Opening Day of the 2015 major-league season.
Gordon, slowed by the slip, was thrown out at first by Atlanta pitcher Jim Johnson.
Two outs.
Earlier, a surprise rain shower drummed the ballpark and forced a brief delay in the second inning, leaving players and fans scurrying for cover as Marlins Park got a soaking.
Blame Gordon’s slip on the rain, right?
“Revisionist history would tell you that it’s because it rained, that he slipped because it rained,” said former Marlins President Donald Samson in a phone interview on May 25, 2016. “I would tell you that it’s possible he could have slipped on a sunny day. But because it was a rain delay, it enabled people to draw that conclusion, including myself.”
It seems unlikely the area in front of home plate was still wet from the second-inning shower. However, the field crew was not prepared for such an event. There was no accessible tarp to cover the infield.
Why should there be? Marlins Park had a retractable roof.
***
Marlins Park opened in April 2012. It features a sophisticated retractable roof designed to protect fans and players from Miami’s sweltering summer heat and the pesky thunderstorms that often barrel through the city.
An announced crowd of 36,969 fans packed the park Opening Day, hopeful to see the genesis of a winning season. It was 80 degrees at first pitch and mostly cloudy. Yet the forecast — it called only for a 20 percent chance of rain — looked promising for a beautiful day of baseball.
The Marlins kept the roof open.
In making such day-to-day decisions, Samson said he and others involved “look at temperature. We look at wind speed. We look at wind direction. We look at humidity, relative humidity and rain chance.”
All of this information was found on a weather app.
***
Six former Marlins All-Stars — Luis Castillo, Jeff Conine, Alex Gonzalez, Charles Johnson, Mike Lowell, and Carl Pavano — gathered on the field to throw the ceremonial first pitches. Minutes later, at 4:22 p.m., Miami starting pitcher Henderson Alvarez ignited a cheer from the hometown crowd — those who arrived to the ballpark on time — when he forced Atlanta outfielder Eric Young to ground to second for the first out of the new season.
Up next, Jace Peterson smacked the second pitch he saw from Alvarez to center field for a single. On his first pitch to Nick Markakis, Alvarez balked Peterson to second, moving the second baseman into scoring position.
Markakis, facing a 1-1 count, then singled to center, scoring Peterson for a 1–0 Atlanta lead.
Alvarez, perhaps feeling some Opening Day jitters, settled down to retire the next two batters, escaping further damage.
The Marlins failed to produce a baserunner in the bottom of the first, and Alvarez sailed through the top of the second.
In the bottom half of the inning, Atlanta starter Julio Teheran struck out Michael Morse swinging.
Marlins third baseman Martin Prado then came to the plate.
With the count even at 1–1, spectators suddenly began to scramble as a dark, gray storm cloud above unleashed a steady rain onto the uncovered ballpark.
“It started raining and then raining harder, and I just remember thinking it’s not going to rain harder, but then it rained even harder,” Samson said during our phone conversation. “And then I remember the umpires getting together and realizing that we were about to have a rain delay.”
Home plate umpire Jeff Nelson confirmed Samson’s fear.
“As the umpires waved the players off the field for what would be a 16-minute weather delay, the roof began its west-to-east slide,” columnist Greg Cody wrote the next day in the Miami Herald. “You can’t hurry love or a retractable roof, apparently, so the grounds crew scrambled to spread bags of glorified cat litter across a puddling infield as by agonizing degrees the motorized roof began leisurely to cover the field and sodden fans.”
***
The Marlins Park roof structure weighs 19 million pounds and closes in “between 11 and 15 minutes, depending on the wind,” according to Samson at the time we talked, as it travels about 39 feet per minute.
“It was extremely surreal when I realized we were going to have a rain delay in a retractable roof facility, and I was the one responsible,” Samson said. “And it was Opening Day. I knew that the roof was open, and I didn’t think the rain was coming.”
Samson, as was critically noted in many media reports, used weather apps on his phone to track a storm moving toward the Marlins Park vicinity. At the time, the team did not consult with meteorologists or weather services.
“I looked at three different weather apps, and I didn’t think we were going to be impacted and neither did the people around me,” he said. “And all of the sudden it started raining and then raining harder.”
Meteorologist John Morales is “not a big fan of weather apps,” he said, particularly when used to make decisions that can have an impact on so many people. One reason for his aversion, Morales explained, is those apps gather information from computer models and generally have little to no input from weather-predicting professionals.
“Here you are, trying to predict what the weather is going to be at Marlins Park, a specific point in Miami, and you’re going to the [computer] cloud to retrieve a forecast from a global model,” Morales said in a phone interview on January 18, 2017. “That [forecast] is looking at the entire planet and having it retrieve this one bit of information as to what the weather might be, whether it be tomorrow or the next hour, for that specific point in Miami. And more often than not you’re going to be disappointed with what the app is going to give you.”
Provided Miami’s geographic location — just outside the tropical belt — “There is a lot of moisture and there tends to be a lot of instability in the atmosphere,” Morales said.
“The air is often charged and ready to produce rain showers, not necessarily in April for Opening Day,” said the meteorologist, who consulted with the Marlins about game-day weather “a couple of ownerships ago,” he noted, and years before the team built a ballpark with a retractable roof. “But go a month forward into May, and showers, and thunderstorms too, can pop up almost out of nowhere.”
Examining radar can show where a rain shower is located. “Radar is what’s really out there,” Morales said.
“Unfortunately, when you have a lack of expertise in the area, and unless you’re a meteorologist . . . most people don’t have the expertise in being able to interpret radar imagery. There’s always that chance that you’re going to miss or misinterpret which way a shower is moving.
“Sometimes you have to be in the know to really figure out how things are behaving,” Morales continued. A “meteorologist would be looking at weather radar and be able to give them, at a minimum, the 15 minutes they need to close the roof.”
On picturesque days that appear perfect for baseball, “There might be some isolated showers out there which might clip the park,” Morales said. “And even though they’re isolated, covering 10 or 20 percent of the area, which is not a lot, but if it happened to be in that 10 to 20 percent, then you’re up the creek.”
***
As soon as Samson realized the game was going into a weather delay, he called team owner Jeffrey Loria: “And it was a horrific phone call to make. I was sitting up in a suite, and he was sitting next to the dugout . . . in the rain.”
Samson had been accustomed to making those calls when the Marlins played in an open-air stadium.
“That was an everyday thing,” he recalled. “But in the new ballpark, it didn’t even occur to us — that was year four in the new ballpark — and it had just never, ever occurred to either me or him that I would ever be making those calls again.”
When Samson dialed the phone to Loria on that day, he recalled the owner saying, ‘I thought we had a roof.’”
“I said, ‘I’m sorry,’” Samson recalled. “He hung up, and I hung up. And that was it.
“And I was very careful to avoid him for the next 24 to 48 hours,” Samson said, laughing.
***
Once the roof closed and the field was prepped with raindrops, play resumed. Prado stepped back into the batter’s box and grounded out to the pitcher.
The Marlins pulled even in the bottom of the third when Gordon slapped a two-out single to left, scoring Alvarez, who had doubled on a line drive to deep left field. The Braves ended the inning, and further threats, when catcher Christian Bethancourt threw out Gordon attempting to steal second.
Leading off the top of the sixth, Young punched an Alvarez pitch up the middle and raced to second for a double. Peterson next placed a sacrifice bunt in front of the plate, and Young advanced to third. Continuing to play small ball, Markakis grounded to Gordon. The second baseman threw home in an attempt to nab Young, but the speedy runner beat the throw, giving the Braves a 2-1 advantage.
The Marlins roared back in their half of the seventh. Morse led off with a single to right. Prado followed with another single, and then another came from center fielder Marcell Ozuna. Three batters into the half inning, the bases were loaded with Marlins.
The situation led Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez to remove Teheran in favor of lefty Luis Avilan. The move proved to be a smart choice by the Atlanta skipper.
On a 1–1 count, Avilan forced catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia to ground out weakly to third. Alberto Callaspo picked up the ball and threw home to force out Morse. Bethancourt, the Braves’ catcher, then threw to first to nab Saltalamacchia for the double play.
Miami still had two base runners — Prado stood at third and Ozuna had moved to second — but the Braves could breathe a bit easier now with two outs.
Complete relief came when Jim Johnson induced Marlins shortstop Adeiny Hechavarria to pop up a 1–2 pitch foul down the first base line. Atlanta’s Freddie Freeman parked under the ball and made the catch to record the third out.
The bottom of the seventh turned out to be the last gasp for the Marlins and their fans, who now sat in drier, more comfortable seats.
Gordon’s attempt for a bunt single in the bottom of the eighth failed, partially because the speedster slipped on his first steps toward first base.
Blame it on the rain?
“We had some chances, had some opportunities,” Miami manager Mike Redmond said. “We just didn’t get that one big hit. But we ran into a couple of outs as well. But, that’s baseball. We’ll come back tomorrow and be ready to go.”
In the ninth, Stanton struck out swinging. So did Morse. Atlanta closer Jason Grilli threw two strikes past Prado before the third baseman lined out to second to end the game.
Final score: Braves 2, Marlins 1.
***
As a joke, some fans brought umbrellas or wore raincoats for game two of the series on Tuesday night, Samson recalled. “Whenever I was out in a restaurant or giving a speech somewhere, people would walk up to me and tell me about their rain shoes that they now wear to the ballpark,” he said.
In the postgame press conference, Samson kept the moment light. He was quoted in the Sun-Sentinel saying: “The roof closed as quickly as I could get it closed, short of me pushing it. No. 1 in the manual we wrote is no matter what happens, don’t have a rain delay. So I sort of skipped to part 5, which is ‘predict the weather at your own peril.’”
He also mentioned that rain had previously fallen on Marlins Park, but never enough to cause a delay. Still, it brings up the question: Why was there no tarp?
“We did have a tarp, but it was in a place not readily accessible. It’s near the field, but not on the field,” Samson said in our phone conversation. “So, it would have been a difficult process to get the tarp put over the infield. And the reason I approved having the tarp in an out-of-the-way storage place is, I said there will never be an issue with rain because we have a roof.”
My conversation with David Samson
Marlins President David Samson took a lot of flack from media for relying too heavily on weather apps to predict the severity and direction of approaching storms. In our brief conversation, Samson took full responsibility for the blunder – is that too harsh? – and talked about the “horrific” phone call he had to make to Marlins’ owner Jeffery Loria when he realized there would be a weather delay.
Below is an excerpt of our chat from May 25, 2016. (My questions are in bold.) To start, I asked Samson what he remembered most about the rain delay. He paused for about two seconds, signed, and began talking.
“It was extremely surreal when I realized we were going to have a rain delay in a retractable roof facility, and I was the one responsible. And it was Opening Day.
How were you responsible?
“At the end of the day, when bad things happen, it’s my fault and when good things happen it’s because of someone else. I knew that the roof was open and I didn’t think the rain was coming. I looked at my cell phone; I looked at three different weather apps, and I did not think we were going to be impacted and neither did the people around me.
And then all of the sudden, it started raining and then raining harder. And, I just remember thinking, it’s not going to rain harder, but then it rained even harder. And then I remember the umpires getting together and realizing that we were about to have a rain delay.”
Are you the only person making the decision about closing the roof?
“It’s not just me. Of course, there are other people involved, but it’s my responsibility to make sure that the roof is closed when it’s going to rain.”
How much did it rain?
“It wasn’t a lot of rain, but quick. It was a quick rain delay. I want to say it was about a 40-minute rain delay at most. It was quick. It could have been much worse, but the level of embarrassment was significant.
And then one of our players actually slipped running to first base, Dee Gordon. On what would have been an infield base hit, he slipped coming out of the box because it was wet. And, we lost the game. I don’t remember a lot of games because I’ve been in baseball 17 years, but I remember that game.”
Just because of the rain delay?
“Yes.”
If I remember correctly, the rain delay was in the second inning, and Dee Gordon slipped in the eighth. So, was it that wet?
“So, it’s a great question, right? Revisionist history would tell you that it’s because it rained, that he slipped because it rained. I would tell you that it’s possible he could have slipped on a sunny day. But, because it was a rain delay, it enabled people to draw that conclusion, including myself.”
I read that when you realized it was going to rain, you had a conversation with Marlins’ owner Jeffrey Loria and told him you were going to have a rain delay. He said “I thought we had a roof.” Is that correct? Did that conversation happen?
“That’s exactly what happened, but your timing is a little off. I called him as soon as the umpires were talking, and I said to him, ‘We’re about to have a rain delay.’ And it was a horrific phone call to make. I used to have to make those phone calls when we were at Dolphins Stadium. And those were every day calls I used to make to him saying ‘Rain delay is coming’ or ‘It’s going to rain, we’re starting again in an hour.’ That was an everyday thing. But in the new ballpark it didn’t even occur to us, that was year four in the new ballpark, and it had just never, ever occurred to either me or him that I would ever be making those calls again.
But I did make the call and he did say to me, ‘I thought we had a roof.’”
Was there anything else he said that you can share with me?
“No. I’d say that was pretty much the end of the conversation. I said ‘I’m sorry.’ He hung up and I hung up, and that was it.”
What was the aftermath like?
“It got a lot of attention, obviously, and… No, I was very careful to avoid him for the next 24 to 48 hours.” (Samson said this with a laugh.)
Was he at the ballpark?
“Of course he was. I was up in a suite, and he was sitting next to the dugout. In the rain.”
Do you now consult with meteorologists or are you still using a weather app?
“We do consult with a meteorologist, but we still use weather apps. We’re just much more conservative now.”
How so?
“If there’s even the hint of a cloud, we’ll start closing the roof.” (He laughed.)
Who are the meteorologists? Are they employed by the Marlins?
“No. It’s individual ones [meteorologists] from around town. And the weather service.”
Did you have a tarp?
“We did have a tarp [at the time of the rain delay], but it was in a place that’s not readily accessible. It’s near the field, but it’s not on the field. So, it would have been a difficult process to get the tarp put up over the infield. And the reason I approved having the tarp in an out-of-the-way storage place is I said there’ll never be an issue with rain because we have a roof.”
Is it more accessible now?
“No. We still have it in the same place. The only thing that’s changed is me.”
How so? What do you mean?
“I’m just more conservative about the weather.”
How did you deal with the negative media attention? It seems you had a pretty good sense of humor about it.
“Yes, of course. I did a press conference that day. There was so much media wanting to know what was going on. Listen, no lives were lost. No one’s lives were in danger. No one got hurt. So, I don’t ever pretend that we’re doing something to human life or liberty. We’re an entertainment company. So, I tried to make it entertaining in how I reacted to it, but obviously I take it very seriously, and I was very disappointed, but publicly my stance was to be more jocular.”
What was the fan reaction?
“Most of it was humorous.”
In what forms? Mostly social media?
“Some people brought umbrellas to the next game, or they would wear a hooded sweatshirt or raincoat. Whenever I was out in a restaurant or giving a speech somewhere, people would walk up to me or tell me about their rain shoes that they now wear to the ballpark, that sort of stuff.”
People are still doing that?
“It’s cut down. People remember it. I was at a speech this week that I gave where it came up, but it does not come up nearly as much as it used to.”
How long does it take to close the roof?
“Between 11 and 15 minutes, depending on the wind.”
What’s the process, mechanically? Do you just press a button?
“It’s literally a button, yes.”
Who presses the button?
“We have special button pushers. (He joked.) They are part of the stadium operations group, and their job is to run the mechanical roof.”
Did you hear much back from the field crew after this?
“What are you going to do? They were as unhappy as I was.”
What is the daily process of making the decision to close the roof for a game?
“We look at temperature. We look at wind speed. We look at wind direction. We look at humidity, relative humidity and rain chance. And we make a decision based on all of those factors.”
How soon ahead of game time do you make the decision?
“I would say around four hours before game time, so 3 o’clock for 7 o’clock game.”
How do you inform the public?
“Just our social media.”
How unpredictable are these South Florida rain storms?
“That’s what squalls are. Squalls, meaning the weather is fine, and all of the sudden it’s a thunderstorm and then it’s fine again. These things just sort of pop up. That’s the dangerous part. It just happened to happen at a bad time.”
Any other close calls since then?
“No.” (He laughed)
What did you learn most from this experience?
“I should keep galoshes in my office.”
You still don’t? (I was joking)
“Yes, now I do because you never know.”