The Knoxville Washout: Hours Of My Life I'll Never Have Back

As soon as you mention stealing paychecks (April 7 weblog), it bites you in the ass. Today I got paid to produce a baseball game that was never played, but it doesn't mean I didn't work for it.

I don't think it stopped raining in Knoxville from the moment I arrived Saturday afternoon until the moment I left about 24 hours later. 

Once Saturday night's Georgia-Tennessee game was rained out I had to flush out our scenario for Sunday. By SEC rules, if two games need to be played on a getaway day, they play a 7-inning doubleheader. So we were looking at a 7-inning game instead of a 9-inning game at 1 PM Sunday. Unfortunately the forecast called for a 90% chance of rain between Noon and 5 PM.

I also learned that Georgia's baseball team was busing back to Athens rather than taking a charter or a commercial flight, but the Sunday curfew was still in effect since the Dawgs had to get home for finals. This meant no game could start after 4 PM.

So after immersing myself in SEC baseball protocols I headed over to the Tennessee campus to meet 11 Tennessee students who were to take part in our broadcast as part of the ESPNU Campus Connection program.

After that I braved the pouring rain for a fair dinner at Cocoa Moon. But fair dinners don't cut it when you're on the road, and I'm now essentially 0-for-2 in Market Square in Knoxville. But I enjoyed watching Bulls-Nets Game 7 there.

I woke up and arrived at a soggy Lindsey Nelson Stadium for our 6:30 AM call time. The weather and the weather radar were both unforgiving and the field was drenched. But the powers that be refused to call the game, postponing it from 1 PM to 2:00 to 2:30 to 3:30. We were three minutes to going on the air in a downpour before officials made the wise choice and cancelled the game.

We never had a chance to get this one in, and spent 9 hours standing by and dodging raindrops for 5 live updates and no game.

If we were let go in the morning, this game would be under consideration for Grand Theft Paycheck, but the time stole me instead.