The World of Sports: Ruminations after a rain delay
On Monday night, baseball fans around the country gathered together in sports bars or relaxed in solitude on their couches as they prepared to watch Game 3 of the World Series. The Houston Astros had answered the Philadelphia Phillies’ Game 1 victory with a 5-2 win of their own in Game 2.
With the Phillies not winning a World Series title since 2008 and the Astros’ most recent title coming amidst one of baseball’s most shocking cheating scandals since the Chattanooga Lookouts upped the price of their hot dogs by a dollar, the stakes for this years’ championship series are high.
So baseball fans across the world had to be pretty bummed when Game 3 was postponed due to inclement weather. The game was to be played in Philadelphia’s stadium, which does not have a retractable roof — which would have been nice in this situation.
Seven MLB ballparks have permanent or retractable roofs, an investment that ensures that each game, for the most part, can stick to schedule.
It is an investment, though. Retractable roofs add about 25 to 50 million dollars to the stadium construction budget. Additionally, it costs a few thousand just to open and close the roof each time.
Depending on the city, some MLB teams, like the Los Angeles Dodgers perhaps, don’t really need to make that investment — if anything L.A. is facing the opposite problem that plagued the Phillies and Astros on Monday night.
It’s one thing to have a rain delay, it’s another to have a delay of rain.
The area surrounding L.A. is projected to see more long-term droughts and extreme heat waves by 2050. Of course, this doesn’t mean that come 2050 these natural disasters will suddenly increase — they will steadily ramp up as time goes by because of the worsening climate crisis.
No rain and extreme heat doesn’t bode well for L.A. stadiums, specifically Dodger Stadium which, unlike SoFi Stadium and Crypto.com Arena, does not have a roof.
But we don’t like rain as sports fans, right? I can think of countless times when rain has gotten in the way of my middle school lacrosse games or college football games I was enjoying with my dad — or a particular World Series Game 3 that I was planning on watching while putting together Tuesday’s edition of the Daily Trojan.
Well, when it comes down to it, rain is pretty damn important and Southern California isn’t getting nearly enough of it. The lack of rain is contributing to the rising temperatures that will make it a nightmare to schedule daytime baseball games in the hot months of the summer. L.A. is projected to experience 3 times as many hot days in 2053 as this summer. A “hot day” is considered 94 degrees — L.A. County typically experiences around seven a year. Playing or watching baseball in the hot sun at noon on an August day will grow less and less appealing to one of baseball’s most loyal fanbases.
My speculation is that Dodger Stadium will adapt to the worsening climate. Something tells me that a team valued at over $4 billion would be able to construct whatever system is needed to beat the heat, whether it be a roof to block the sun and/or an advanced air conditioning system.
But, in this future world that seems apocalyptic — and is not the worry but expectation of climate scientists — I bet most of the high schools in L.A. will not be able to afford to construct climate-beating state-of-the-art sports complexes. As the heat grows worse, I predict many high schools will be forced to cancel some of their sports programs — or at least delay the start of fall sports until the temperatures, well, fall.
Additionally, if these extended droughts continue, the city and county budgets will likely become even more stretched than they are today. Keeping high school football around isn’t as important as clean water access or landslide prevention (as landslides are more likely in climates experiencing droughts).
Sometimes when I think of the future, I picture something that isn’t the most appealing to me. It’s the sad reality that climate change has imposed on us, and it’s easy to get bogged down thinking about some dystopian future where water is currency and baseball is a thing of the past and the wealthy are in built-up castles plugged into virtual reality machines.
I didn’t necessarily think I would get political when I began this column this morning, but when you vote on Tuesday, think of the climate and what you want your future to look like. Because personally, I hope to see you, in the sunshine, at a Dodgers game 30 years from now.
Patrick Warren is the sports editor and a senior writing about the relationship between sports and climate change. His column “The World of Sports” runs every other Wednesday.