“Apres BRPA, le deluge!”

The final game of Baseball Related Programming Activities 2010 lasted an hour and seven minutes; the tarp rolled onto the field with two outs and two on in the third, never to come off. At that point, the Kansas City T-Bones led 3-2, and they’ll lead 3-2 when the game is resumed sometime later this summer.

It had been a good, if slow, game to that point. The T-Bones had jumped on top with a double, triple, and groundout in the first, only to see the visiting Argo-Morehead Redhawks tie it with a two-run homer in the second, an inning that also featured an impressive, sprawling catch of a foul pop-up by T-Bones first baseman Ryan Fox.

But then the rains came, and stayed. So did a lot of the crowd. I lent Jim my New Yorker so that he could read the profile of Steve Carrell, while I read the newsletter of the Anthony Powell Society. Jim was willing to bet that I was the only person in the ballpark–I might have said in Kansas–reading that periodical at that moment; he wasn’t willing to go that far when I turned to reading Batman #700.

Alas, the end that seemed inevitable arrived, and at 10:10, not quite two hours after the rain started, the game was suspended for the night. Unexpectedly, however, the fireworks went on regardless! So we stood in the rain and squinted through the rain at colorful explosions.

To end the trip, a note for the holiday: Tonight, as I found myself part of the unexpectedly cheerful crowd huddled under the roof of the grandstand, having just watched a half-dozen soaked summer interns dance the macarena on the field for our (and their) amusement as the second hour of the rain delay drew near its close, Ray Charles began to sing “America the Beautiful” over the PA and I tracked silent fireworks in the distance, tiny eruptions from another celebration. They cut through the rain and rose just above the top row of the empty bleachers before subsiding in sparks, and, well, as Fozzie put it, patriotism swelled in the heart of the American bear.

Happy Fourth of July, folks. Hope you can join us for a leg of the next BRPA.