Water, water everywhere, and not enough time for sports

Bob Davis and Pat Petrone represent two solitary figures as they sweep up the area beside the first base dugout at World Series Park in Saugus.The town is hosting the District 1 Babe Ruth all-star tournament, but on this day, they’re concerned more with righting the canopy that has been blown over by one of the many thunderstorms that swept through the area Wednesday.There’s the continuation of a game called by darkness the night before (in part, due to threatening weather) and another game afterward. But it’s no-go. Even though World Series Park has state-of-the-art drainage, it cannot hold this much water. There are puddles everywhere. The games are postponed.”It stopped raining, and if it had just stayed dry, we’d have been fine,” says Petrone, the head coach of the Saugus baseball team, who helps Davis out during the Babe Ruth tournament every year. “But then it rained again. Right now, what you see is about Round 3. When it gets to this point, it’s impossible to dry the field. It takes about an hour and a half once it stops raining ? but then it started again.”Last month, the focus was on the Midwest, which was continually deluged with rain. Now, it’s our turn. And while what we’re going through doesn’t even come close to what states like Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri and Indiana have experienced, the timing of this stubborn weather pattern couldn’t have been worse as far as the summer youth sports season has gone.What season, you might ask. And that’s a very good question.”In all (my) years of being involved with this – and I’m just finishing my 43rd – I’ve never had a year like this,” says Alice O’Neil, the administrator for District 16 Little League, which encompasses Lynn, Saugus, Swampscott, Nahant, Revere, Lynnfield and Winthrop. “We’ve never had to think about going to single elimination to meet the tournament deadlines, and if we get much more rain, we’re going to have to.”O’Neil has been district administrator since 1992. One of her predecessors, Skip Mageary, changed the tournament format from single to double elimination in the early 1980s, “and since then, we’ve never had to adjust it,” says O’Neil. “And I hope we don’t. Because it’s the kids who lose out.”Tuesday night in Saugus, the umpires stopped the Lynn-Revere Babe Ruth game twice because they saw lightning far off in the distance. That may have irked some people who felt that the skies just weren’t all that threatening, but O’Neil says all youth baseball organizations are super-strict about lightning.”You see it, you’re out of there,” she says. “Even in the distance. And it doesn’t matter whether there’s rain or not. You’re gone.”Little League rules stipulate that once a game is halted by lightning, it cannot resume for at least a half-hour (it’s 10 minutes in Babe Ruth).”But,” O’Neil says, “if it’s a heavy rain, they don’t have to wait the half-hour.”But it’s more than just lightning that causes postponement.”If you step onto the field, and you sink – not a lot, but even a little – then it’s unsafe,” she said. “It’s not safe for the kids.”Also, she says, while most people think that throwing a few bags of quick-dry will help absorb water in the infield, “people forget about the outfields. A kid can get hurt out there just as easily as anywhere else.”But when quick-dry works, it can be amazing. Tuesday’s rain forced postponement of a scheduled Little League all-star game at Pine Hill involving Wyoma and Swampscott (which was postponed again last night, and will – hopefully – be played today at 5:45). Yet at Walter Flynn Field, which is about a half-mile from Pine Hill’s Gallagher Park, where it rained just as hard, the West Lynn American/Pine Hill-Wyoma losers’ bracket softball final was played.There may be a couple of reasons for this. First, the softball teams have to have a champion by Wednesday, when the sectionals start. And second, the West Lynn American Little League put enough quick-dry on the field to get it ready for play.”And that’s why they playe