CHICAGO — The San Francisco Giants and the Chicago Cubs played 4 1/2 innings in 6 hours, 9 minutes. And when the game was finally called early Wednesday morning, they still hoped to play some more.
An unplayable field following a downpour led to the game being called off at 1:16 a.m. The teams had played just enough on Tuesday night for the Cubs to earn a rain-shortened 2-0 victory.
The field conditions got so bad partly because the grounds crew couldn’t get the tarp on when the storm hit — prompting some taunts from the Wrigley faithful.
The game was delayed a total of 4 hours, 34 minutes, and fewer than 1,000 fans remained at the finish.
“We tried to wait as long as we could,” Cubs general manager Jed Hoyer said. “Because the Giants were in a pennant race, we felt an obligation to do that. I talked with the umpires a lot and (president) Theo (Epstein) talked with MLB to come up with a way to play this game the way it should be played.
“Obviously, that didn’t happen, and it’s unfortunate.”
Nonetheless, the Giants believed they had sufficient reason for a “probable” protest, according to a team official. They lost for the seventh time in 10 games to fall 4 1/2 games behind Los Angeles in the NL West race.
“I hope they listen and watch what happened there,” said Giants manager Bruce Bochy, who was visibly upset. “In this day and time, it shouldn’t happen. It can’t happen with the importance of these games. I’m going to leave it at that.”
When the rain and the wind intensified in the middle of the fifth inning, home plate umpire Hunter Wendelstedt stopped play. The grounds crew couldn’t get the manual tarp fully in place, leaving large portions of the infield exposed to the downpour for more than 10 minutes.
Because a mechanical problem wasn’t at issue, there was no provision to pick up the game at a later date.
“The problem that all the parties faced was, in the baseball rulebook, there was nothing to put our hat on to suspend the game,” Wendelstedt told a pool reporter. “The game became regulation with the home team winning in the top of the fifth inning. There was really no way around it.”