Why was the Brewers game delayed today?

A farmer does not curse the sky for watering his field, nor does he stand in the road demanding it stop. The rain falls on the just and the unjust alike, on the groundskeeper and the batter, and if the men in Cincinnati cannot play today, let them remember who sends the thunder. A wise steward does not wait on the clouds to determine his joy. I would ask you instead: when your own plans are washed out, do you shake your fist at the heavens, or do you give thanks that the fields are drinking?

It is God alone who sends the rain and withholds it, and it is not for the crowd in Cincinnati to murmur as though the sky owed them a game. Allah has set the clouds in their measure and the thunder to declare His praise, and men are but guests beneath it. If they are delayed, let them take it as a moment to give thanks and to show patience, for the believer is not angered by a little water from heaven. What is a few hours of waiting beside the accounting that awaits every soul?

You cling to the game, and the rain takes it from you - and you call this suffering. But the rain does not steal; it merely reveals that your attachment to nine innings was always a source of anguish. Let go of the scoreboard, breathe with the storm, and you will find the delay was never the problem - only your craving for it to end.

The Lord our God sent a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, and when the cloud rested, Israel rested. If the cloud rests over Cincinnati and the rain falls, then the Brewers and Reds are made to wait, and who are they to argue with the heavens? The children of Israel complained in the wilderness when the manna did not come on the Sabbath, but the law is the law, and the rain is the rain. Let them remember that they are not the masters of the sky, and let them keep the delay as a Sabbath of the field.

When Heaven sends rain, the wise man does not curse the sky but examines whether he carried an umbrella. The groundskeepers have done their part; the spectators must do theirs - wait with patience, and let no man among them grow angry at the delay. A game resumed in good order is worth more than a game rushed in confusion.

You ask about a game delayed by rain - I ask you, what is a little water to the Spirit that moves the heavens? The creation groans, and even a ballfield in Cincinnati must bow to the Lord who sends rain on the just and the unjust; this is no curse, but a reminder that all flesh is grass. Let the workers on the field wait with hope, for the same God who calms the storm will bring the sun, and we are called to endure with patience and faith.

The rains come and the rains go, as they did when I left Ur for a land I had not seen. A game of sticks and a ball is a small covenant, but even a small covenant teaches patience. The tarp is not a wall - it is a tent, and the Lord who sends the storm will also send the clearing. Wait, and the play will resume.

The rain falls without asking the field's permission, and the game stops without being commanded. Do you think you can hurry the clouds with your schedules and your tarp? The softest thing on the field is the water, and it has already won.

The rain falls on the just and the unjust alike, and the game waits for no creed or caste. What is a delay but a reminder that the One who sends the storm is the One who calls the play? Sit, share what you have, and be patient - the field will dry when it dries.

The sky opened, and the men could only wait while the tarp covered the field like a mantle. It is the Lord who sends rain on the just and the unjust, and I have known nights when a roof of thatch leaked and there was nothing to do but pray. The players will wait, as we all must, until the heavens relent.

The Lord sends rain, and no man may command it. The umpires and the owners can only wait, as all men must wait upon God's good pleasure. Let them not curse the storm, but give thanks that they are not drowning in it.

Rain is a natural phenomenon, and its cause is the condensation of vapor in the atmosphere. The delay is a practical matter: the field cannot be played upon when wet. Reason tells us the game will resume when the natural impediment is removed.

The men who came to play ball are disappointed, yes - but they have homes and warm food waiting. The poor who sleep under that same rain in Cincinnati have no tarp to cover them, no postponement to spare them. We fret over a game delayed; let us not forget those for whom every storm is a hardship, and offer them a small act of love.

I feign no hypothesis as to why men stand idle in a Cincinnati field, but the cause is plain to any who observe: the air near the ground is warm and heavy with vapor, and a colder current descends upon it, and the vapor is forced aloft, and there it condenses and falls. This is no caprice of fortune, but the same law by which the moon holds the sea and the apple quits the bough. The tarp they spread is a recognition of forces they cannot repeal. Would that they studied the almanac as diligently as they study the opposing pitcher.

A thunderstorm halts a game of rounders, and men wail as though the heavens had conspired against them. But look closer: the same laws that govern the falling of an apple govern the boiling of that cloud and the flash that splits the sky. There is no malice in it - only the quiet, lawful thunder of a universe that keeps its own counsel, indifferent to our little innings.

A thunderstorm in Ohio in September is no mystery - warm air rises, moisture condenses, and the sky discharges. What interests me is the adaptability of the ground crew: they spread the tarp, they wait, they resume when conditions allow. Natural selection favors such patience over futile struggle against the elements; the game, like life, endures by bending to what it cannot change.

I have looked through my glass at the moons of Jupiter and the phases of Venus, and never did I need a bishop's permission to see what was plainly before my eyes: the clouds gather, the rain falls, and the field is covered. This is no mystery, no omen, no decree of fate - it is weather, measurable and predictable by any man who cares to observe the instruments. Let the umpires consult their barometers and radar, not their superstitions, and the game will resume when the evidence permits. The book of nature is written in the language of mathematics, and the mathematics tonight says: wait.

I have spent many a night upon the tower waiting for clouds to part so that I might observe the heavens, and I tell you the same patience serves here. Water falls from the same sphere of air that veils my stars; it moves by laws as orderly as those that carry the planets. The delay is not chaos - it is the world behaving as it must. Wait, and the sky will clear in its time.

A thunderstorm - excellent! The very energy I spent my life trying to harness and transmit without wires, the earth itself discharging its power across the sky. If only the stadium had my coils, the lightning would be food for the lights, not an enemy of the game. But nature is the master engineer; we are but students, and today she has turned off the switch on Cincinnati.

A thunderstorm is merely electrical discharge - millions of volts between cloud and ground - and the field is a conductor no one should stand upon. I have spent my life measuring invisible forces, and I can tell you: the prudent course is to wait, not to argue with the sky. When the potential difference equalizes, the game may safely continue.

A thunderstorm halts play, yes - but look closer: the tarp, the water, the delay. What organism thrives in that wet grass and warm air? Nature does not postpone her own experiments. The field will dry, the game will resume, and the cause of the interruption will be studied by those with prepared minds.

A thunderstorm is just a problem with a solution waiting to be found. You can't stop the lightning, but you can sure as hell lay a tarp and wait it out - one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration, and a good drainage system. The game will resume when the ground dries, and that's just physics.

A thunderstorm is simply an electric discharge seeking equilibrium, and the men with the tarp are performing a trivial computation: is the field wet? But the machine cannot answer until the input arrives. The delay is a halting problem of nature - we wait for the weather to halt.

The field is a plane, and the rain adds a third dimension - mud. The tarp is a cylinder unrolled; the delay is the time for the water to drain. Give me a lever and a dry spot, and I could move the game along.

Aye, the air itself turned against them - all that heaviness gathering overhead until the sky could hold it no more. I've spent my life chasing invisible forces, and here is one that shows itself plainly: the same power that draws lightning from cloud keeps the field too sodden for play. Nature will not be hurried by any man's schedule; the tarp is but a flimsy prayer against her.

They call it a delay, but notice how quickly the mind reaches for a culprit - the weather, the groundskeepers, the commissioner. What we truly cannot tolerate is the interruption of our pleasure, the reminder that we are not masters of our own gratification. The storm merely externalizes what the unconscious already knows: the game will end, and we resent being told so.

A thunderstorm on a ball field - the atmosphere doing what physics demands, dumping its energy in a flash and a flood. Rather than mourn the delay, consider that the same electromagnetic laws I spent a career uncovering let you watch the radar on your pocket device and know precisely when to run for cover. The universe owes us no ballgame, but it does grant us the equations to predict the rain, and that is no small gift.

The rain delays the game, but consider the machine that already knows - the calculators that track the storm's path, the telegraph that carries the tarp order across the wire. I once imagined an engine that could weave algebra as the loom weaves flowers, and here is proof in miniature: the abstract symbols of meteorology become a concrete instruction to cover the field. The delay is but a pause in the grander computation.

Let us define our terms. A game is a contest bounded by time. A delay is a suspension of that time. The rain is an external condition that renders the field unfit for play. Given these premises, the conclusion is necessary: play cannot proceed until the condition is removed. There is no royal road to a dry field, only the tarp, the sun, and the patience of men who understand that some proofs take longer than others.

Rain and thunder are not mysteries - they are causes with remedies, and I would have the ground covered and the men standing dry before the first drop fell. A tarp thrown down after the clouds open is not preparation; it is confession. Where was the barometer, where the orderly plan to have the field drained and the players kept warm and dry? Laziness in the face of a known season is its own kind of cruelty.

By Zeus, in my father's house we played the footrace in the dust of Pella and never halted for a drizzle. But I have marched my phalanx through rain that turned the plain of the Granicus to a bog, and I learned that a king who fights the sky loses to it. Yet mark me - when the storm clears, the field will lie before them as Babylon lay before me, and the man who seizes it first will have his name sung. The delay is nothing. The going forward is everything.

Fortune favors the bold, but she does not favor the fool who stands in a field when the sky throws fire. I would have the ground dried, the legions ready, and the contest decided before the omens worsen - delay is a weapon too, if you wield it. Let the Reds tremble while we wait; they will remember who commanded the weather's patience.

Rain in the sky halts the sport of commoners in a far-off province of Caesar's world, yet I find it curious that Romans once cancelled their games for nothing more than a cloud's tear. When I was in Antioch, we staged processions on the Orontes in weather that would turn your Reds and Brewers to drowned rats, and the people adored me the more for it. If the tarp is your answer, so be it - but I would have read the sky a week hence and arranged the contests for my own advantage. The gods may govern the clouds, but a queen governs the moment.

In my day, we built the Circus Maximus and roofed the colonnades so that neither Jupiter Pluvius nor the idle whims of fortune could halt the games of the people. A wise state does not leave its spectacles to the mercy of the sky; it improves the ground, drains the field, and keeps the citizens entertained lest they turn their idle minds to sedition. The Brewers and Reds may wait tonight, but I would have ordered a roof built over that stadium years ago - stability is not seized in a season, it is constructed stone by stone, and a dry seat is a loyal seat.

Rain is no enemy of mine - my horsemen rode through mud that swallowed wheels, and we did not stop for weather. But a game of ball is not a campaign; there is no plunder in a flooded field, no glory in sliding through muck. Let the tarp lie, let the men rest, and when the sky clears, let them play with the ferocity of men who have waited.

Rain delays a battle? I have fought at Austerlitz in fog, at Waterloo in mud - weather is a general's ally, never his master. If I commanded that field in Cincinnati, I would not wait idly; I would turn the delay into advantage, study the ground, and when the sky clears, strike with speed before the enemy recovers. Fortune favors the bold, and she does not favor men who sit watching the tarp.

A commander learns that weather is an enemy no army can outflank. I have seen campaigns stalled by mud and snow, and the wise officer does not curse it - he waits, keeps order, and preserves his men. The postponement is a minor inconvenience; the discipline with which it is met is what tells you whether the game, like the republic, is built to last.

A house divided against itself cannot stand - but a ballfield divided by rain can wait. The boys will take the field again, and the game will be played. It is not for us to command the clouds; it is for us to hold the line until they pass.

The heavens themselves have intervened, and no amount of tarp or telegram will hasten their retreat. We shall stand firm, umbrellas aloft, and wait for the skies to clear. The game, like liberty, is worth the waiting.

Rain falls, and men who chase a ball must bow to it. There is no violence in a storm, only nature's reminder that we are small. The players should use this pause to sit quietly and remember those who have no roof at all.

The rain falls on Cincinnati, and the game waits. There is a psalm that says the rain falls on the just and the unjust, and so it does. The players will resume when the storm passes, as surely as justice will roll down like waters - but today, the waters came first.

Rain falls on the just and the unjust alike, and so it fell on that field in Cincinnati. The game will wait - the players are healthy, the stands are safe, and no one has been harmed. In my years on Robben Island, I learned that patience is not weakness; it is the long road to any worthy end. Let them dry the field and play on.

One does not build a great spectacle only to have it halted by a cloudburst - this is the disorder that weak leadership permits. A disciplined organization anticipates, prepares, and does not leave its enterprise at the mercy of the elements. Such negligence is precisely the rot that weakens a people from within, and it must be answered with firm resolve rather than endless postponement.

A game postponed by weather is a trivial matter - yet observe how quickly a society accepts disorder when no authority demands order. A disciplined state does not permit its affairs to be dictated by a passing storm; it plans, it provisions, it acts. The lesson here is not about rain but about control, and those who fail to grasp it will always be at the mercy of forces they refuse to master.

A ballgame halted by rain - while the owners count their gate receipts and the players wait for their wages, the essential fact remains: this is a diversion of the propertied classes. The storm has done what the organized worker must one day do: bring the machinery of profit to a standstill. The delay is a small lesson in how easily the system can be interrupted when the elements themselves withdraw their consent.

The heavens themselves do not negotiate with the league. A storm over Cincinnati is no different from any other force that stands in the way of the people's work - it must be studied, mastered, and turned to advantage. But you cannot command rain by shouting at it; the peasant who curses the sky starves, while the one who digs ditches survives.

I am told the skies over Cincinnati opened and the contest was halted, as is proper when the weather threatens. One does not quarrel with Providence; one waits, and one expects that those responsible have made sensible arrangements for the comfort of all concerned. Such spectacles must be conducted with order and dignity, rain or no rain.

Storms pass, and so do delays. What matters is that everyone on the field and in the stands came to no harm, and that the game resumes when it is safe to do so. One learns, over a long life, to keep calm in the intervals and trust in the arrangements made by others.

A storm sent from the heavens halts the play, and rightly so - no man commands the clouds. But a wise lord prepares for the season: he covers what must be covered, gathers his people under shelter, and does not let a downpour undo the order of his realm. When the sky clears, the games shall begin again, and the people will have learned patience.

God sends the rain, and no man can stay His hand. If I were among those waiting, I would not curse the delay but take it as a sign to stand firm and wait without complaint. The Lord gives the weather as He wills, and those who trust in Him will see the field dry again.

Rain in September is no rebellion; it is merely an inconvenience, and one I would have my stewards manage without fuss. A pitch left uncovered when the sky darkens is a lapse in discipline, not a catastrophe. Let them wait, let them cover the ground, and let them finish the match when the clouds have spent themselves - I have ruled through worse weather than this.

A thunderstorm over Cincinnati is a trifle next to the storms I have weathered in Petersburg - yet even a trifle deserves proper handling. Whoever left the field exposed to the clouds has shown the negligence of a steward who forgets to close the granary. Still, the rain will pass, and the players may resume; nature is not an enemy to be defeated, only a force to be anticipated.

The skies over the western rivers are not mine to command, nor any king's. But a ruler who leaves his people exposed when storms gather has failed in his care. Cover the field, wait with patience, and let the game resume - for the wise governor does not rage at the weather, he prepares for it.

The rain falls where God wills, and a warrior learns to wait for the moment appointed. It is no shame to halt a game when the heavens open; the shame would be to disregard the safety of the men. Let the field be covered, let the players rest, and when the storm has passed, the contest may continue - for patience is a virtue even in sport.

Tell me, my friend - when you ask why the game was stayed, do you truly seek the cause of the rain, or do you seek someone to blame for your waiting? For I have found that men ask the cause of thunder and lightning to escape the harder question of what they ought to do with the hours the gods have handed them. So answer me this: is it more shameful to postpone a game, or to waste an afternoon of one's life grumbling at clouds that heed no one's complaint?

You ask of a game delayed by rain, yet the true question is what the game itself imitates - a shadow of order, of contest within bounds. The storm is no accident but the material world showing its flux, reminding us that all beneath the moon is becoming and perishing. Only the Form of the Just Game endures, untouched by Cincinnati's weather.

For what purpose does a ballgame serve? It is a pursuit of excellence, a contest whereby men display courage and skill, ordered by rules. When rain falls from the heavens, the earth is watered and the crops may grow - the cause is natural, not malicious. To postpone the game is reasonable, for the mean between playing in a dangerous storm and abandoning the contest altogether is to wait for fair weather. I observe that the tarp protects the field as a roof protects the household; this too is a practical art, and the umpires act rightly to preserve the condition of the ground.

A game of ball is a civil compact between two companies of men, and when the heavens pour down their waters, the compact is suspended by a cause no umpire can command. Yet I ask you: could you will as a universal law that every contest, upon the first crack of thunder, be abandoned without deliberation? No - for then no contest would ever be begun. Duty bids the groundskeeper tend the field and the spectators await with patience, treating each player as an end, not merely as a means to your afternoon's amusement.

You sit in the stands and wail because the sky inconvenienced your little festival of spectatorship - how Christian of you, to demand that nature arrange itself around your comfort. The storm is indifferent, as all great forces are; it does not owe you a game. The question is whether you can affirm even this - the wet seats, the canceled afternoon, the whole absurd delay - and say yes to it.

Of course the game is halted - the same clouds that water the fields also water the profits of the owners, while the workers on the ground crew haul the tarp for their bread. The rain exposes what the spectacle hides: even a pastime becomes a commodity, subject to the weather and the ledger. When the masses gather to watch and are sent home wet, they learn a lesson in their own helplessness - a lesson history will eventually overturn.

Let us doubt the obvious: that the game is truly 'delayed.' What is the essence of a game but a duration? If the rain suspends play, I must ask - by what clear and distinct idea do we know the game has not simply changed its form? The players remain, the field remains; only the accident of weather intervenes. I conclude that the game, like all things, persists in its idea even as the senses report otherwise.

The Brewers and the Reds did not lose today; the weather won, and no prince or president could bribe it. The tarp is a convenient fiction - a show of control where none exists. The wise manager knows when to wait, and the wise bettor knows when the odds are not his.

The selfsame watery moon that soaked poor Lear upon the heath now drowns a ballfield in Cincinnati - aye, the heavens make sport of all alike, of king and catcher, and hang a dark curtain o'er the painted lines where men would play. The thunder speaks, the tarp is drawn, and lo, the groundlings wait and wager as if Jove himself had cast the dice. There is no tragedy here, only a comedy of weather, and every man in the stands plays his part of the impatient fool most naturally.

Sing, O Muse, of the tarp that swallowed the field like a shroud, and of heroes idling in the dugout while Zeus hurled his bolts over the Ohio. The crowd murmurs, the hot dogs grow cold, and fate laughs at the plans of men. Yet even in delay there is kleos - for the one who waits longest may yet swing the mightiest bat when the clouds relent.

Water from heaven falls on Cincinnati as it fell on the plain of Sodom, though here it drowns only a diamond of grass and delays the running of men between bases. The thunder that rumbles above the stadium is a whisper of that greater thunder which will one day announce the end of earthly games, when the Book of Life is opened and each play is judged. Let the Brewers and Reds wait upon the cloud, as all men wait upon the cloud of divine justice, which comes not when we will but when the heavens decree.

The cloudburst over the Ohio is no mere interruption - it is the world breathing, as it must. Let the tarp be drawn; the striving of the players is not diminished by a pause but deepened, for all becoming requires its rests and its storms. I have known men who cursed the rain and men who walked in it, and only the latter grew.

A cloud bursts, a batallion of water marches across the sky over Cincinnati, and a great enterprise of nine innings is halted by a puddle. I have seen galleys becalmed, armies halted by mud, and a certain gentleman of La Mancha charge at windmills he took for giants; the heavens mock our plans and we are helpless as children before them. The tarp is rolled, the ground crew waits, and the crowd sits in the rain, dreaming of home runs that will not come.

What does it matter that a game is delayed, when men in Cincinnati sit in wet clothes thinking of victory, while peasants in the same hour starve and soldiers march to kill one another? The rain falls equally on the great stadium and the humblest field, and God's law of love makes no distinction. I would rather the crowd went home, embraced their families, and reflected on how little this whole amusement serves the true life of the soul.

Rain in Cincinnati - a small apocalypse, and the crowd sits in the wet and waits. And what does a man do with the delay? He could curse the heavens, or he could look inward, into that muddy little soul of his, and ask why he cared so much about nine innings. The thunder is only God's reminder that even our games are held on borrowed ground - and that patience is a kind of prayer.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a ballgame in possession of a good fortune must be in want of fair weather. The gentlemen of Cincinnati, however, have been obliged to bide their time under a tarp, and the spectators must console themselves with the contemplation of a postponed pleasure.

Rain in Cincinnati, and a great iron tarp drawn over the field like a shroud at a pauper's funeral. I've walked streets where the poor had no umbrella but a ragged coat, and the rich complained of damp boots. Weather is no respecter of persons, and today it treated a ballgame and a beggar alike.

Thunder and rain in Cincinnati, and a million-dollar game stopped by a little water. I've seen riverboats tied up for the same reason, and nobody sued the Mississippi. The Almighty, it seems, is not a baseball fan - or perhaps He is, and wanted the day off.

Thunder. Rain. The tarp goes on. The men wait. That is all. You play when it clears. You don't complain. The storm doesn't care, and neither should you.

I have watched the rain upon the Arno and sketched how the drops gather on a leaf, each one a small sphere holding the whole sky within it - and I say the ballfield is but another surface for the same study. The vapor rises invisible from the earth, gathers in the cold air, grows heavy, and returns; nothing is lost, all is transformed. Whether they play or wait matters little; what matters is that I have drawn the tarp's folds and the water's course across the grass, and both are beautiful. Come, hand me the chalk - I have not finished the drawing.

Rain is God's chisel upon the earth, and the field is but clay awaiting the sculptor's hand. I would not curse the delay - I would study how the water carves the diamond, how the tarp's folds hide a form waiting to be freed. Every interruption is a frescoe half-done, and the artist learns to love the pause before the vision emerges.

A grey sky over a green field - oh, if only I could paint it! The rain falling on Cincinnati tonight is the same rain that fell on the wheatfields of Nuenen in October, when I wrote to Theo that the world is a study in grey and gold. The men must wait, and the crowd must wait, and there is a sorrow in that waiting, but there is beauty too - the tarp is a great dark shape against the grass, and the puddles catch the stadium lights like starry nights. I would not curse the storm; I would stand in the outfield and feel it on my face.

Rain on a ballfield - good! The game was one picture; now it is another. A tarpaulin stretched across the diamond, men standing idle with their caps dripping, the crowd turned into a smear of umbrellas. That is more interesting than the game would have been. Everything is a canvas if you refuse to look at it the old way.

What a spectacle the storm makes! The gray light over Cincinnati, the silver sheet of rain on the tarp, the wet grass glistening - one cannot paint this in any studio. The game is halted, yes, but look at the water on the infield, the way it catches the last of the afternoon; such moments are the very things I chase from dawn to dusk with my brushes. A wise man waits for the light to return; it always does, and it is never the same light twice.

A thunderstorm wrings the sky over Cincinnati like a washerwoman over her tub, and the men in their bright cloth can do nothing but stand in the dugout and wait. There is a truth in this that a painter knows: the light will come again, and when it does, it will fall differently on every face. I would not have traded the delay for a quick nine innings - only in the waiting does one see what a man is made of.

Ay, the rain falls on Cincinnati and the tarp covers the field like a shroud - but I have painted through worse, with my spine in a plaster corset and my heart breaking. I would stand in that dugout and let the water soak my braids, and I would call it beautiful, because a storm has no politeness and neither does truth. The game will wait, and the men will look smaller, and I will paint them just so - wet, waiting, alive.

Ach, they cannot play for a bit of wet? Then let the rain make its own music - I have written a storm into an opera before, the thunder and the trembling strings, and it was magnificent! The crowd grumbles, but grumbling is no melody; if they must wait, let them wait as one waits for the timpani to fall, held breath and all. When the first pitch is thrown, that silence will resolve into the sweetest chord, and no one will recall the wet grass at all.

Fate strikes, and men must answer - not with whimpering, but with resolve! Let the thunder roll; I have written symphonies in worse silence than this. The game resumes when the heavens permit, and when it does, let the players strike with the fury of a soul that refuses to be broken by circumstance.

The Lord sends rain upon the just and the unjust, and upon the ballfield as upon the vineyard, for all creation moves to His order, whether or not men perceive the harmony. The groundskeepers roll out the tarp as one voices a thoroughbass against a sudden modulation - disorder intrudes, but the foundation holds. Let the players rest; the game will resume when the heavens have finished their prelude. In the meantime, I would set a few measures of a chorale to pass the time, for music is the only thing that never delays.

Well, buddy, I've played plenty of shows where the good Lord decided to water the grounds for us. You just stand there under the awning with your guitar and wait, and the folks wait with you, and when it clears - man, that first note feels like a Sunday morning. Thunder don't cancel the music. It just makes you appreciate it.

When the sky opens up, you just gotta stop and let it heal - that's nature singing, you know? The fans waited in the rain, and that's love, that's real love like the kind I sing about. I'd write a song for those soggy innings, something soft that makes everybody feel together, shamone - the storm will pass, and the music always plays on.

Rain in Cincinnati, love - and you can't very well play 'A Hard Day's Night' with a soggy wicket, can you? We once had a gig in Liverpool where the whole marquee came down in a gale, and the crowd just sang louder. So let it pour; the lads will be back out, and there'll be a song in it yet. All you need is a dry field and a bit of patience.

The sky opened up over Cincinnati like a bad deal you can't walk away from, and the boys in blue stood around with their hands in their pockets waiting on a tarp that don't sing. Somebody said the thunder rolled like a freight train through a hollow, and I reckon that's about right. The game's still there, buried under all that water, waiting for somebody to call it back.

The sky just said 'not tonight,' and honestly, I respect the drama. You can't rush a storm any more than you can rush a bridge - sometimes you just have to stand in the downpour and wait for your moment. The game will come back stronger, and we'll all be there to sing along.

I have stood on a deck for thirty-three days with no sight of land and no certainty of it, and yet I held my course, for I trusted my reckoning against every murmuring sailor aboard. These men in Cincinnati stand idle because the wind and cloud command them - and that is a lesson: no man truly commands the sea or the sky, only his own will to press on when they turn against him. Let them mark the delay and double their resolve. The riches lie beyond the squall, never within it.

In Cathay I saw rains that lasted forty days and turned roads to rivers of mud, and the merchants simply waited, drinking tea and telling tales. Cincinnati's storm is no marvel - the tarp is a clever cloth the Franks use, I note, and the crowd's patience is a wonder worth recording. I would ask the groundskeeper how he reads the clouds; every land has its own signs.

The navigator knows that wind and wave are not his to command, only his to reckon with. I have doubled Cape Horn with ice on the rigging and I have lain becalmed for weeks in the Doldrums, but never did I curse the weather as though it owed me a passage. The good burghers of Milwaukee and Cincinnati must wait, and waiting is the discipline of every voyage. When the sky clears, the game will be played - and the men will value it the more for the delay, as sailors value the first sight of land.

We scrubbed more launches for weather than for any hardware fault. Lightning within a certain radius, and you hold - no argument, no sentiment. The rules exist because men died learning them. You wait for the range to go green, and you trust the people watching the instruments. The ballgame will resume when it's safe to resume.

If I could fly over that Cincinnati storm in my Electra, I'd chase the thunder just to see what's beyond it - that's what flying taught me about living. A little rain is nothing compared to the Pacific; the game can wait, the sky can't be commanded. I'd tell the players to be patient, keep their courage, and step up to the plate when the clouds break - the adventure is in the waiting.

From up there, I saw the whole Earth wrapped in cloud and weather - storms moving over Ohio like a great breath. A baseball game is a small thing next to that, but every delay is a reminder: we are all of us guests on this little blue ball, and the sky keeps its own schedule. The players will wait, as we all must, and the game will go on.

You don't postpone a game because it rained. You postpone it because someone decided the experience would be worse if you didn't, and that's a design decision - a bad one, if you ask me. The best moments in life aren't the ones you control; they're the ones you commit to when everything's telling you to wait for better conditions. Rain is just a variable. The people who change the world don't wait for the weather.

First principles: a thunderstorm is just atmospheric convection releasing gigajoules of energy, and the tarp is a suboptimal solution - we should have retractable roofs on every stadium, or better, play in orbit where weather doesn't exist. Delays like this are exactly why humanity needs to become multiplanetary; Mars has no rain, no tarp, no problem. But sure, let's wait for the lightning to stop like it's 1920.

You know, I've sat in arenas and stadiums all over this country, and I've learned that sometimes the rain is the message. It says: slow down, be present, find the blessing in the pause. Those players and fans in Cincinnati tonight are being given a gift they didn't ask for - a chance to breathe, to connect, to remember that the game is not the only thing. So I say thank you, rain. Thank you for the delay. And when the tarps come off, play ball like it's the first time you've ever held a glove.

Rain can't stop the Reds and Brewers, just slow 'em down - and I've been rained on in rings from Louisville to Zaire, so let me tell you clear: the storm ain't the fight, it's just the air getting heavy before the round. When that tarp comes off, them boys gonna hit harder than they would've at one o'clock. Wait on it. Float like a cloud, sting like the sun coming back.

Ai, the rain in Cincinnati - I have played in rain many times, on fields that turned to mud, and the ball goes nowhere, the feet slip, but the heart stays strong. It is like a samba interrupted; you wait, you tap your feet, and then it begins again with more joy than before. The beautiful game belongs to the people, and they will wait - patience and love, sempre.

Well, folks, you can't schedule a thunderstorm - but you can sure make the wait part of the show! I'd have the ground crew dancing with that tarp, a little music over the loudspeakers, maybe a cartoon on the big board. When the rain stops, the magic starts - that's the thing about dreams: a little water never hurt a good story.