An Inside View: Rain Delays

This week the sun is out, the birds are singing and afternoons are filled with the sounds of bats cracking, balls bouncing, rackets swishing and feet pounding. This time last week the rain was pouring down and only the pitter-patter of rain drops on a cold drizzly afternoon could be heard. Do you know how monotonous, boring and utterly irritating that sound can be to a sports reporter with no sports to cover? To sit and listen, leaves one only pondering all the extra work in tracking down coaches for their schedule changes as they try to jam make-up district games into an already crammed schedule. The stress and monotony can get to you and you can’t even get outside to get a breath of fresh air to clear your head without drowning in the monsoon. To relieve the tension, the sports side of the newsroom must delve into the magical bag of tricks and use divine inspiration, creativity and a healthy overdose of unused caffeine to find distractions before we become bored enough to get talked into performing actual work. Work is after all the detriment of a sports reporter. Doubt that? Consider that we have a career that pays us to attend every conceivable sporting event our heart desires and then tell people about what happened. Giving us real grunt work in the office is like pouring salt on a slug, it’s not just amusing to the salt-pourer, it’s also hard on the slug. After the scrambling and running to try and catch up with the overcrowded schedule this week, it seemed that the best way to relate a rain week to the public is with the gem of sports journalism, the stats. Recorded, scored and checked by our official office counters, who range in age from eight and a half to eleven years old, are the official rain delay, slow week stats for the Herald sports department. 17 – the number of times one can check on their fantasy baseball team in a single hour without getting warning messages from the web site that an unauthorized user might be accessing your account. 66 – the number of times one can look out the window and mumble phrases about “when is it going to stop raining” before co-workers progress from looks of dismay to throwing crumpled post it notes and various other office supplies in your general vicinity. 12 – the temperature of your toes after covering a Smokies game that borders on being a snow-out rather than a rain-out of the second game in a double header. 34 – the number of minutes one can stay awake on an unexpected night off due to weather after thinking that they should really take advantage of the night and consider starting work on their taxes. 3.5 – the number of pounds lost by the average Herald sports reporter when forced to resort to four days of eating real food rather than ballpark hotdogs and peanuts. 179 – total number of paperwads needed to fill a regulation size trashcan in a game of intra-Herald sports department basketball. 1 – exact number of times it can seem like a good idea to play a quick game of catch in the press machine room. 3 – the number of vital bodily functions that can be threatened to be discontinued if the sports staff ever throws a ball in the Herald press machine room again. 63 – emails can be sent to a friend in one afternoon before their boss catches on that they are not actually working but being corrupted into a lengthy discussion over the merits of the designated hitter, aluminum bats and the infield-fly rule. 91 – the magic number of times a sports reporter can be teased by the line, “gee, guess if it doesn’t stop raining soon, you’ll be out of a job,” before standing out in the monsoon getting drenched is more enjoyable than sitting in the office. 951 – the number of local high school games that were cancelled, rescheduled, started early, started late, dropped for a district away game on the other side of Knoxville or merely vanished into the abyss of the master schedules folder on a sports reporters desk. 0.08 – not what you’re thinking, its the distance in inches from the ground a sports reporters nose will be after falling to the ground to give thanks for the sun’s merciful return.