If you have ever wondered how the decision is made to play or postpone games in Millennium Sunday Softball League on days like yesterday ... then here's an insight on the ongoings that occurred beginning the night before and at 7:30 a.m. yesterday.
The night before I am speaking to division captains and liasions of the league as late as 1:00 a.m. to come up with a game plan on how to get the games played after the rain on Saturday which continued into the overnight.
This is the worst possible scenario for the league to come up with a plan after heavy overnight rain ... but we did.
In fact, there were three options in place depending on field conditions.
This post that was made on the message board on Saturday at 6:00 p.m. has had over 480 people view it thus far - *** Millennium Sunday teams are being asked to help with field preparations for tomorrow's games *** and it certainly helped with the response it received and with the cooperation of teams.
Thanks to all the teams who got their fields ready and especially to those teams who were in the process of preparing their fields, but didn't get to play on them.
Also, thanks to Sonny Pompilii, Jim Egan and Franny King the three District 6 Deputy Commissioners/Umpire Assigners who all are needed to assign the size of a league like Millennium Sunday for their help with changing field locations with their umpires.
I'm not going to go every detail of the chain of events, but here are some of the ways things took place on Sunday morning.
Beginning at 7:30 a.m. until 12:50 p.m I was working the phones and I mean working the phones.
There were 48 phone call that came in, with 16 of them going over to voice mail and that's not counting the 30 some calls I made or the many emails I received.
Just take a look at some of the emails below from league coaches who helped me immensely on deciding which division games could be played and which fields could be used if I needed to make field locations changes.
I will keep the identity of the coaches anonymous although those who wrote these emails will obviously recognize them as their own.
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Hey Joe ,
Does it look like games will still be scheduled with all of this heavy rains today ? I can't see the fields being playable tomorrow with rain not stopping till 8 am . Let me know
Joe,
I just left Camp Upland. Each field is completely flooded. just sayin
Joe,
it isn't suppose to stop raining until 5am. Are the games really going to be played? I know it may be a while until we play
Hey Joe,
The fields I've come across in the Lansdowne/Drexel Hill area are pretty messed up. They were still damp going into today, and now its on hour 8 of rain and according to the Weather Channel, going to rain until 10am. I'm not sure if these fields can be salvageable, especially for important, and even playoffs games. Still your call, I'll be checking the message board.
Joe,
fields are flooded. no way anybody can play at 69th street
Joe,
Camp Upland C field is unplayable or fixable. The soft dirt on infields on the other fields along with puddles make it impossable to walk on without sinking down 2 inches. Now what?
Joe,
We have been working on incinerator field for a little bit. This game could be played on the grass if we rotated home plate to left field like we have before. What should we do?
Joe,
Hoffman field is playable
Hey Joe-
For future reference. The two lower fields at Clayton Park were in playable conditions as of 10:30 this morning. The field closer to the golf course clubhouse, didn't even need much work. The other lower field needed some work. The upper for field (with the shirt RF) needed a lot of work.
Of course this is only one of 18 different fields.
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If you look at these emails it probably makes you wonder how the league got any games in ... but we did.
Every playoff series in the Millennium Sunday "A", "B" and "C" Divisions were played and completed, except for one series because of negotiated time constraints that were put in place before the start of the series.
The Millennium "Dudley White" Division was able to finish their regular season schedule which became even more important that the division did play because Colombo Lodge was on the dreaded bye week and would not have played for a minimum of five weeks ... ugh.
Thanks to everyone who participated in getting the above games played ... it's another reason why the teams in the Millennium Sunday Softball League are the best!
Oh yeah, right around 10 o'clock last night I had the best tasting couple of cans of Miller Lite that I ever had.
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