The Cubs Grounds Crew Has Gone Exactly 1 Year Without A Tarp Debacle
(CBS) Aug. 19, 2014 is a date that will forever live on in Cubs lore. Some might call it a Cubby Occurrence.
It was on a rainy Tuesday night a year ago today at Wrigley Field that the Cubs grounds crew submitted one of the all-time tarp blunders in MLB history. As a short rainstorm came in the bottom of the fifth inning of a Cubs-Giants game, the home team's grounds crew failed miserably to pull the tarp over the infield. What should've been a short delay turned into chaos and a soaking wet infield, as no amount of work and diamond dry could overcome the water obstacle.
Because the Cubs were leading and the Giants had already batted five times, the umpires -- following the MLB rulebook -- called the game final at 1:16 a.m. after a 4-hour, 34-minute delay, awarding Chicago the win. That didn't sit well with San Francisco, which protested the game based on the fact that -- we're summarizing here -- this was a host's failure and not a weather failure. Noting their failure, the Cubs had actually proactively offered to call it a suspended game rather than a completed game, but the umpires initially went with the letter of the law.
Turns out, MLB agreed with the Giants, upholding a protest for the first in nearly 30 years and saying that the tarp had not properly been put away after its previous use, leading to the ensuing fiasco.
Two nights later, the game would be picked up where it was left off, and the Cubs would hold on for a 2-1 win. But we'll never forget the tarp fun.