Outdoor youth sports and the weather gods

I spend half of baseball season tethered to my phone or some other device where teamsnap is loaded into.

This year’s baseball season has been a particularly wet one so I have spent more, not less time, keeping an eye on that app.

I’m not feeling it this year. I’m mostly just annoyed. 🙄

Here’s how it goes for those who don’t tend to sporty kids:

For every game there’s a home team and an away team. The home team is the one responsible for canceling the game if the weather is bad, and also for advising the umpires.

Tonight we were the away team. We had to wait for official cancellation by the home team.

Then, the Weather Network issued a special weather statement about some doom and gloom rain coming so I waited, and waited, and WAITED, for the cancellation message to come in from the home team.

I wanted to give the parents of the players on our team enough notice not have to rush around…game start is 6:30, warm up begins a half hour prior (sometimes a full hour, depends on the team) and with most people working until 5, more notices is always appreciated.

In order to avoid more stress while waiting for official cancellations, I loaded all the equipment into the car earlier (my partner is a coach and keeps some of the game equipment, but he’s not around today so I had to deal with it).

I also remembered to place a blanket on the back seat so that the dog would have a place to sit without making a mess on the fabric in case the game is on but the rain does come and it’ll get canceled halfway through. My friend was going to meet us at the diamond and hand over her dog to me there so I can watch him over the weekend while they are off to some tournament someplace.

My plan was to leave here at 5:50.

The Weather Network issued their statement at just after 5 pm.

The game cancellation came in at 5:45, five minutes before I had to leave.

Sigh

I feel like my entire afternoon was spent begging to the weather gods to make a freaking obvious decision already while attached to every device with all its constant bombarding of radar maps, statements, text messages, emails and alerts. I can appreciate the coaches on the other team being unsure on how to proceed; the weather hasn’t been reliable this spring. Still…I thought they left it a bit too late.

The entire time I was planning ahead and anticipating and doing stuff, the kids were ignoring it all. This ticked me off even more. Whose game are we prepping for anyway?

Sheesh.

Anyway, NOW the game has canceled, I got to blog about my stress, and there is a wine bottle mocking me from behind the glass cabinet. What do you say, should I have a nice glass of red?

I think I might. 🍷