Rain, rain, rain

The NY Times reminds us of this fine piece of wet baseball history:

...another of baseball’s greatest games had soggy roots in the rain: Game 6 of the 1975 World Series, won by the Boston Red Sox in the bottom of the 12th on Carlton Fisk’s home run.

The Red Sox and Cincinnati Reds arrived in Boston to a nor’easter and waited as Friday’s scheduled Game 6 was postponed two days in a row. On Sunday, when clearing seemed imminent but Fenway Park remained drenched, Commissioner Bowie Kuhn had to decide whether to try playing the next night — squarely against “All in the Family” on CBS and a new sensation called “Monday Night Football” on ABC — or postpone Game 6 all the way to Tuesday.

When Kuhn told the Times columnist Red Smith that he preferred night games “to better accommodate the fans,” Smith accused M.L.B. of kowtowing to the networks.

“Exposing cash customers to raw night cold is a novel way of accommodating them,” Smith said. “Accommodating TV sponsors at prime time is something else again.”

Meanwhile, with Fisk still just a good catcher and not yet a New England icon, the Reds decided to try to stay sharp by working out inside Dussault Cage at Cousens Gymnasium on the campus of Tufts University. While pitchers worked off a portable mound plopped down on the running track, Pete Rose and Joe Morgan bashed line drives into fishnets hung from the ceiling.

Why Tufts? Reds Manager Sparky Anderson was asked.

“I think Harvard would be a little over my head,” he replied.

The sky over everyone’s heads soon cleared, and the Series played on.