When Hurricanes Relocated Baseball Games

By Al Yellon - Editor

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Aug 27, 2011 - This weekend, as Hurricane Irene barrels up the east coast of the United States, multiple major league baseball games have been postponed and rescheduled in anticipation of the hurricane's rainstorms and high winds. You can find a complete list of postponed games at this Baseball Nation StoryStream.

Within the last eight years, though, hurricanes hitting the southern United States forced several games to be relocated. I attended two of these games, baseball played in neutral sites; there was both fun and history involved.

In early September 2004, Hurricane Frances headed toward south Florida. The Chicago Cubs were scheduled to play a three-game series against the Marlins there; the entire series was postponed. One game was moved to Wrigley Field and the other rescheduled as part of a doubleheader in Miami. While the Marlins were in Chicago playing the Cubs, yet another hurricane, Ivan, began to bear down on the Miami area. Not wanting to risk the Marlins flying into hurricane conditions, MLB had them stay in Chicago and flew their opponents, the Montreal Expos, there to play two games at US Cellular Field, home of the White Sox, who were out of town playing the Twins.

The White Sox put tickets on sale for $15, of which $5 was earmarked for hurricane relief, and told fans they could sit anywhere in the lower deck on a sunny Monday afternoon where the late-summer temperature was 81 degrees at game time. I was one of 4,003 diehard baseball fans (the crowd included at least one Marlins fan who flew to Chicago from West Palm Beach) huddled near the dugouts to get a closeup view at an oddity:

So the Marlins and Expos became the first National League teams to play a game at an American League park since 1946, when wet paint forced the Boston Braves to play the Philadelphia Phillies at Fenway Park.

At the time of this series, the NL wild card race had several teams tightly bunched, including the Marlins and Cubs. This led to Chicago fans -- who wouldn't otherwise likely care about either the Expos or Marlins -- to take passionate allegiances. Cubs fans, who wanted the Marlins out of the wild card race, rooted for Montreal. White Sox fans, many of whom can't stand anything Cubs, cheered for the "home" team, which had brought scoreboard graphics, sound effects and mascot Billy the Marlin along from south Florida.

The Marlins won the game 6-3 and also won the next day 8-6 in front of a slightly larger gathering of 5,457, but neither the Cubs nor Marlins made the postseason; the NL wild card went to the Astros. It was one of the last chances for anyone to see the Montreal Expos; after those two games, the teams were finally able to fly to Miami and complete their five-game series there, but Montreal baseball had just 20 games remaining before the team moved to Washington and became the Nationals the following spring.

Four years after Ivan's hurricane-relocated games, controversy erupted along with Hurricane Ike, which headed toward the Houston area in September 2008. The Cubs, sailing toward the NL Central title, were to travel there to play the Astros after road series in Cincinnati and St. Louis. But the approaching hurricane sent the Cubs back to Chicago to await a decision on the games. MLB postponed the first two games even as Astros owner Drayton McLane insisted the games could be played in Houston.

In hindsight, that was quite selfish. Houston-area residents were evacuating, and McLane was asking the Cubs to fly into a hurricane? Commissioner Bud Selig finally prevailed on the Astros to agree to play two of the scheduled three-game series at Miller Park in Milwaukee. Astros fans and players complained bitterly about being forced to play games only 90 miles from the Cubs' home town, but had they agreed earlier, the games could have been relocated to Atlanta, Washington or Tampa. By the time McLane finally relented, it was logistically impossible to play anywhere but Milwaukee. The Astros weren't happy about it; even though they were the "home" team, they refused to wear their home uniforms, even wearing their gray road pants for the two games scheduled for Miller Park.

The Brewers put tickets on sale at 9 p.m. Saturday evening, Sept. 13 for games that were to be played at 7 p.m. Sunday and 1 p.m. Monday. No one thought they'd draw much better than the 2004 Marlins/Expos games.

They were wrong. 23,441 -- more than half Miller Park's capacity -- bought tickets in less than 24 hours. Naturally, the overwhelming majority were Cubs fans, myself included:

That was a ticket bought on a whim; I decided to splurge and sit ten rows behind home plate. I thought it would just be fun to see the Cubs play the Astros at a neutral site. Instead, I got to see Carlos Zambrano no-hit the Astros 5-0. Zambrano's troubles since then are well documented, but that night he was lights-out, in front of a crowd wearing Cubs blue roaring its approval. It's one of the best days I've ever spent at a baseball game. What's been nearly forgotten in the aftermath of Big Z's no-no is that Ted Lilly nearly threw another one the next afternoon; he took a no-hitter into the seventh inning and the Cubs won 6-1, allowing just one hit. The one hit combined allowed in two consecutive games is the fewest in major league history.

Every baseball game is different and you never know quite what you're going to see when the first pitch is thrown. But if you ever get a chance to see a game relocated by a hurricane or other weather, go for it. You just might see something historic.

Read More: Carlos Zambrano (P - FLA), Ted Lilly (P - LOS), Houston Astros, Miami Marlins, Chicago Cubs

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