Nice Weather... If You’re a Duck

It was not a good sign: seconds after pulling out of our driveway early Saturday morning on our way to the MidSouth Global Sports baseball tournament in which the Louisville Longhorns were scheduled to play, I had to slow down to allow a family of ducks to cross in front of our car. This is not a fabrication to make a journalistic point about how much precipitation we had this past weekend, but rather a bona fide statement of fact (if you don’t believe me, my car-mate, Casey, is available for verification purposes, or you could just ask any of the three mallards).

Water fowl making themselves at home on our street is not a common sight—we live in the Highlands, so named because the area stands 60 feet above the flood plain of the Ohio River, so even during the heaviest periods of rain, when other parts of the city of Louisville, Kentucky may otherwise be under water, our neighborhood remains high and dry. For that trio of ducks that waddled across Meadow Road to feel at home on the lawns and thoroughfares around our house, there would have had to have been a significant accumulation of the wet stuff.

And there was. So much so, in fact, that as we splashed through the rivers that flowed along the sides of the roads, and as our Ford Flex continued to be pelted by rain for the entire duration of our hour drive, I wondered aloud—several times—how, even if the skies cleared at some point, the fields at the Kilianski Baseball Complex in Fort Knox could possibly be playable.

They weren’t. Nor would they be. We sat in the parking lot for a spell, looking down at the sopping-wet fields, wondering why we were sitting in the parking lot, looking down at the sopping-wet fields, before the tournament director finally stated the obvious: there would be no baseball today. Ever the optimist, he declared that the fields would be ready the next day, and we would all play the entire tournament—a minimum of three games, and as many as four, per team—on Sunday. Given the present condition of the fields, a weather forecast that called for the possibility of more rain throughout the day and high temperatures that would not get out of the 40s, one had to wonder how the baseball diamonds could possibly dry out in time for play to begin at 8 AM the next morning.

They couldn’t. We’ll just chalk that plan up to wishful thinking. But, as the saying goes, If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. Fortunately, unlike Saturday morning, we did not have to ride down to Fort Knox again, as the decision to cancel the tournament on account of mud was made late Saturday night, in time to allow us all to sleep in on Sunday.

“No games today—or tomorrow, for that matter.”