Meteorologists Fight Back!
Posted: October 28th, 2008 | Filed under: Baseball | 32 Comments »
I wanted to give this its own special post: As you might know, baseball czar Bud Selig blamed bad weather forecasting for his lamentable decision to start the World Series in the rain on Monday. Now, I will be the first to admit that blaming the weatherman/weatherwoman is one of the oldest and most noble of all American pastimes — and I fully appreciate Bud pulling out the card when he was backed into a corner. This is a lot like people blaming the media for the mess they’re in. I say: Go for it.
However, I will say, it didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. I obviously do not know who baseball trusts with weather forecasting — I have speculated that Bud uses the Polyanna Weather Service, Rose-Colored Meteorology and the Rain, Rain Go Away Weather Center — but i do know that, at the very least, the POSSIBILITY of heavy rain and nasty conditions was well known and much discussed. As I mentioned in a previous post, the weatherman on local television (I believe he was from the local FOX channel) said point blank that there would be light rain at the start, the rain would get heavier at 10 p.m., and that once the rain got heavy it would not stop any time soon. I mean, that’s the local FOX weather guy — didn’t have to go too far to get that accu-weather forecast, you know?
Anyway, when the night turned into a fiasco, Bud fought back and on several occasions ripped the meteorologists who gave him the information he needed to make his misguided and wrongheaded decision. Turned out it was all their fault, the evil weather-folks of our nation. They gave him bad information. What could he do? They told him there would only be a light rain, about a tenth of an inch. What could he do? It’s no exaggeration to say tin the span of one press conference, Bud ripped the weather people at least three times. Maybe more.
Well, it just so happens that brilliant reader Owen Doherty is a meteorologist and, based on his resume, one of the smartest people on earth. Owen is a Ph.D. student at the School of Marine and Atmospheric Science at Stony Brook University, which of course, has a great football team — go Barometers!*
*Actually, Stony Brook is the SeaWolves, and the football is not all that great though the SeaWolves are coming off a tight 28-24 victory over Coastal Carolina (school of sudden Chiefs sensation Tyler Thigpen).
Anyway, Owen wrote this brilliant blog post breaking down the hour-by-hour radars and showing, pretty conclusively, what I rather callously guessed: There’s no way they should have started the game.
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“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” Bob Dylan, Subterranean Homesick Blues.
“I need a weatherman to tell me that this torrential, Biblical deluge might hopefully stop at any minute.” Bud Selig, Citizens Park Homesick Blues.
Bud is learning the hard way that in the age of the internet and 24 hour sports news, it’s really difficult to get people to buy your BS justifications for decisions that look very questionable in hindsight.
This never would have happened to Kenesaw Mountain Landis.
I could see this happening to Happy Chandler, though.
I”m not sure WHAT you would do, except maybe get Jason to cover it for you? You could trade with him by writing a column about how Carl Peterson sucks.
That is a terrific post.
Owen, if you’re reading the comments, what would be the relationship between MLB and an independent forecasting firm?
Would a firm like that make a recommendation on whether or not to play, or are they simply providing raw data to MLB?
Also….how wrong does a precipitation forecast have to be to fairly be called just plain wrong?
You defend the forecast cited by Selig, noting that the measured rainfall was only thirteen-hundredths of an inch off the forecast. Seems reasonable enough, but then again that also means that Philly got over twice as much rain as was forecast.
How close do you have to be for the forecast to be defensible?
Alright, while I see your point, imagine the situation Bud would have found himself in if the rain really remained light or stopped altogether. Given the weather on the east coast today, people would have never forgiven him for it. He would be the laughing stock of all commissioners (to the extent he isn’t already). Even if the chance of NOT getting heavy rain at 10pm was only 10%, it wasn’t worth the risk of canceling the game. While Bud looks like a moron today, it could have been much worse.
You gotta at least start the game! I know it’s bad that the Series is in a serious holding pattern, and I’m glad the score isn’t 12-1, leaving the players to play out a string of meaningless innings.
What else could Selig have done? The field was clearly unplayable, and if nothing else the tarp should have been called out earlier. Now that there’s a SOP (which should be in B/W in the rule book) then maybe we won’t have to have these conversations in the future.
To call any postseason game, much less an elimination game, without playing nine is bad, regardless.
I recall in the College World Series a few years ago, Miami and somebody played on a Friday night in a torrential downpour, in a game that should have been run ruled (not in place, I’m sure) and it was a sour note to end the career of Ron Frazier (name?), an esteemed name in coaching who had been at Miami about 10,942 years. That game should have been called, and wasn’t b/c the national championship game was set for CBS at noon the next day.
Had the Series ended with the field unlayable, continuing for the sake of continuing, THAT would have been the greater tragedy. In the wake of the circumstances, that was the only call to make. Late? Sure, but better than never.
Make that “unPLAYable” field! My bad.
If I had Bud’s PR account, I’d have advised him to blame global warming. (A whole new argument immediately opens up, hostility shifts to the oil companies and auto makers, and the game ceases to register.)
At least now I know what the weather forecast in the Cleveland area looks like for the next 7 days. I’ll put ESPNews up against Lezak any day.
As soon as I heard Selig going off on the local weather wonks in Cleveland, I turned the channel. Selig is a piece of work. Besides the fact that he has more facial ticsm during interviews than my co-worker who drinks 10 cups of coffee a day, he also has a fantastic ability to deflect blame. Please, someone tell me when the last time you heard him say that he or the front office made a mistake in anything concerning MLB.
I can’t wait for him to start dropping bombs on Rawlings because of their baseballs during the congressional hearings on shattering maple bats.
The solution is simple: The series is on Fox, do some cross-promotion and get Family Guy’s Ollie Williams to do the weather. Just because it would offend 90% of the audience is no reason to say no!
“Ollie, how’s it looking out there?”
“IT’S RAINING SIDEWAYS!!!”
Former terrorist Bill Ayers has been a lightning rod for criticism that Barack Obama is wrong for America.
Ayers was a member of The Weathermen.
Meteors are huge chunks of rock that explode into our planet at thousands of miles per hour.
Weathermen are called “METEORologists.”
Whose side do you think they’re on? America’s? Or a violent outer-space federation?
Worst of all, weathermen just ruined the World Series.
Weathermen: America can’t afford to take that risk.
So, explain to me why every team stopped building retractable-roof stadiums? Why didn’t Chase Field or Safeco Field lay down the blueprint for every single new park to come down the pike in the last decade? It boggles my mind that the Twins’ new stadium is going to be open-air — will the Twins just play road games until mid-April, or will they just go back into the Metrodome for any postseason games?
Say what you will about the Sky….SkyD…..Rogers Centre here in Toronto, but when a game is schedule, the game is played.
They’ll all be played in Milwaukee if Selig has anything to say about it.
Ok you have now written 3 blog posts and an article about the suspended game to rain. Can we move on now? Also what if by slight chance there was no rain and the game was not played. Don’t you think that would have looked worse?
//You gotta at least start the game!//
Why?
Everyone knew the game would never be finished. Why did they have to start, waste the efforts of two outstanding pitchers, and risk injury to everyone involved?
It was a joke, a farce, whatever you want to label it.
So they don’t start the game, it’s postponed a couple of days. Big deal.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. I just thank God nobody got hurt.
“Weathermen: America can’t afford to take that risk.”
MSS, I think you forgot the last line of the commercial:
“I’m Bud Selig and I approved this message”
A retractable roof can add as much as 200 million to stadium construction costs.
What’s in it for the team? The teams MAKE money on rainouts and rain delays. You collect parking and concessions revenue without actually delivering the product. What do you think the Phillies made during the Game 3 rain delay? 40,000 people eating and drinking for 90 minutes. $400,000? More?
In a market like Seattle you could argue that excessive rainouts would have an adverse effect on attendance long-term, so the expense of a retractable roof makes sense. Same thing with the oppressive heat in Houston or Phoenix.
In a market like Philly I don’t see the payoff for the club. Who’s going to spend 200 million for the sake of the one World Series game a decade that turns into a debacle?
My senior colleague here at Speake, Easey and Blather says Selig should have claimed he insisted the game go ahead as he didn’t want to disappoint Joe The Plumber.
Sidebar: Why does FOX get the capitalization treatment? I get it with ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, TBS, CNN, etc. Those are acronyms. But FOX is just a word. As far as I’m concerned, they’re just Fox, same as any other non-acronym network, like Bravo or Lifetime or Versus.
Okay, back to the weather chatter…
Somewhere, someone is throwing a Frosty at Nicolas Cage.
I only look at the NOAA site for weather. They forecasted between 3 and 6 inches of snow(!) for today. Not one flake came out of the sky last night, the sun’s out this morning, and it looks to be a great day.
I believe I’ve only seen one real explanation of why meteorology is more guess than science:
Dave Spritz: I can see it. I sorta of wanna understand it. Why is it?
Station Assistant Director: Well, it’s Canadian trade winds.
Dave Spritz: Behind all of it?
Station Assistant Director: Yeah, this will get pushed by wind out of Canada.
Dave Spritz: So what’s it gonna do?
Station Assistant Director: I don’t know. It’s a guess, it’s wind, man. Blows all over the place.
What is sadly lost in all of this complaining about the game – whether it should have been started, why was it suspended after the tie….etc. – is that we now have a fantastic WS experience tonight!
We complain constantly about how games start too late on the East Coast in the playoffs (which is VERY true) and now we have this golden opportunity – a short game for all the donuts – fall into our laps and we are still griping about Monday??? Seriously??
My 7 year old son will get to see a WS game end for the first time in recent memory, with all the drama and intrigue.
The glass is way more than half full here. I wish more folks could get behind this one.
Mikey — I am pretty sure that MLB does contract out with independent meteorological firms. The MLB article about the weather makes reference to Bud conferencing with three weather outlets, who they are, is not known.
As for how accurate does a forecast have to be to be considered right, that’s a subjective judgment call on the user of the forecast. The science does not exist presently to forecast to hundredths or tenths of accurate precipitation. The best we can do is give probabilities of precipitation reaching some amount. e.g.
0.00 – Trace: 30%
0.01 – 0.10: 50%
0.10 – 0.25: 25%
0.25 + : 5%
Can anyone remember a contest called off based on FORECASTED weather? There may be numerous examples, I just can’t think of any. As such, if the field is playable at game time – you play. Right? I dislike many (most?) of Bud’s decisions but what choice did he have? It’s too easy to be outraged and rant with the advantage of hindsight.
Thanks Owen. I guess my question really was, knowing what you know, do you think that those firms – whoever they are – make a recommendation to MLB about calling a game or do they just hand off the data to their clients and say, you’re on your own?
Kennesaw Mountain Landis? He not only refused to cancel the 7th game of the 1925 series because of threatening weather, but didn’t stop it because of a similar downpour– since he was in attendance, apparently the decision was his (don’t know if that’s true now). The Pirates and Senators played nine (in Pittsburgh) in atrocious conditions.
Selig probably should have just listened to famed weatherman Phil Connors:
“Somebody asked me today, ‘Phil, if you could be anywhere in the world, where would you like to be?’ And I said to him,’Prob’ly right here – Elko, Nevada, our nation’s high at 79 today.’ Out in California, they’re gonna have some warm weather tomorrow, gang wars, and some *very* overpriced real estate. Up in the Pacific Northwest, as you can see, they’re gonna have some very, very tall trees.”
Phil: Commander, what’s going on?
State Trooper: There’s nothing going on. We’re closing the road. Big blizzard moving in.
Phil: What blizzard? It’s a couple flakes.
State Trooper: Don’t you listen to the weather? We got a major storm here.
Phil: I make the weather! All this moisture coming up out of the Gulf will push off to the east and hit Altoona.
State Trooper: Pal, you got that moisture on your head. You can go back to Punxsutawney or you can freeze to death. It’s your choice. What’s it gonna be?
Phil: [pauses] I’m thinking…
Phil: You want a prediction about the weather, you’re asking the wrong Phil. I’ll give you a winter prediction: It’s gonna be cold, it’s gonna be grey, and it’s gonna last you for the rest of your life.
I just can’t believe it’s been almost a week and there’s been no mention of Springsteen segment from last week’s “Office”. When I saw it I predicted it’d be on here within hours, if not minutes.
happy halloween, buddy!
Pitchers and catchers report in one hundred and nine days.
This blog made the season more fun for me, so thanks Joe and thanks to all the commenters here. This is the smartest, funnest blog in baseball.
It’s a long, cold slog to Opening Day.