After losing eight games in a row, I’m sure that Kansas City Royals‘ fans comforted each other, saying “Be patient! We’ll win one once enough time passes!” After all, the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Seattle Mariners have both dropped eight in a row this season, and the Miami Marlins are in the midst of a nine game slide. Oh, and there’s the abysmal TEN game skid the Minnesota Twins, the Royals’ AL Central rivals, enjoyed during the month of May. But when those fans talked about time passing, I can’t imagine they expected it in the form of a 5+ hour of rain delay.
The game summary from baseball-reference.com is extremely misleading:
ROYALS - 4
@ CARDINALS - 2
Thursday, May 30, 2013, 8:15 p.m., Busch Stadium III
Attendance: 43,916, Time of Game: 2:27
This recap doesn’t take into account the four hour delay in the ninth inning, causing the game, already pushed back an hour because of rain to 8:15 p.m., to end at an insomnious 3:14 a.m. In a highlight video of the game-ending groundout, you can hear Royals fans chanting in the background…leading ViralRead to ask WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MIND stays until 3 in the morning to watch half an inning of inter-league play (at an away game no less?)
Apparently we can learn that Royals’ fans are loyal fans.
Kansas City fans wait out the rain delay. JEFF ROBERSON/AP
One of the bigger issues in this scenario is the new MLB rain delay rule. Rule 4.12(b)(4) says that if the last game of a series is in question in the delay scenario, the game is called and all runs scored by the visiting team in an incomplete inning are not counted. To be clear, in this scenario, the runs Kansas City scored in the top of the ninth before the rain delay would be void if the game had been called. Instead the game was not called, and the St. Louis Cardinals stayed up all night with nothing to show for their troubles except damp clothes and a drawn-out loss.
