Cubs, Maddon content to give Opening Day a second chance Tuesday
The first signs weren't good, and things got worse from there Monday at Wrigley Field.
Snow blanketed the playing field early in the morning, and odd as it seemed, the sprinklers were turned on to keep the grass warm.
The ever-optimistic Cubs at first said the scheduled 1:20 p.m. game time would be moved back an hour so the grounds crew could clear and prepare the field.
But the next signs that there would be no baseball came when a group of Cubs players, led by relief pitcher Carl Edwards Jr. started throwing snowballs instead of baseballs.
Their command appeared to be good.
"Well, he's from South Carolina," manager Joe Maddon said of Edwards. "And the other guys were probably from Latin America, I would imagine. If you've never seen snow before, man, you're going to get out there and do something like that. If you're from Hazleton (Pennsylvania), I really don't need to see it."
But seriously, Maddon was fine with Monday's postponement.
"Well, on the way out, I had no idea if I was going to the Cub convention or Opening Day," he said. "So I thought it was the right thing to do.
"I woke up and I saw everything going on, and you look at the map and you look at (Tuesday) being an open day with a much better forecast, I thought it would be the prudent thing, and we did it."
Maddon confirmed that right-hander Tyler Chatwood, Monday's scheduled starter, would pitch the rescheduled opening-day game.
The Cubs said they worked with Major League Baseball on whether to play Monday's game because of the special nature of Opening Day. But things got no better with the weather, and the grounds crew was still out with leaf blowers early Monday afternoon trying to clear the snow.
Maddon also said the postponement does nothing to take away from the special nature of Opening Day, and he noted the Cubs have played nine games on the road already, going 5-4 and trailing the first-place Pirates by 2 games.
The Cubs have pitched well overall, and their team ERA of 2.59 is second in the National League to the New York Mets' mark of 2.40.
However, the team's batting average of .223 is fourth from the bottom.
"I can't use bad weather as an excuse; we've been actually hitting in good weather," said Maddon, whose team opened in Miami and then played this past weekend in a domed stadium in Milwaukee. "So that's too bad. Hopefully we'll start hitting in bad weather. I'm looking that the paradoxical intent's going to occur right now."
New Cubs closer Brandon Morrow, who pitched for the Los Angeles Dodgers last year and the San Diego Padres before that, appeared to enjoy the snow, but he seemed as glad as anyone the Cubs will try it in better weather the rest of the week.
"You want to get it in. Everybody's excited, wants to get it in today. That's just the way it works," Morrow said. "We'll get a better game in tomorrow. It's tough. I've played in a game like that before. My rookie year (with Seattle), we went into Cleveland and had four games snowed out. I think the first game we played 4⅔ (innings) and ended up having that one canceled. It got a little sloppy. Yeah, you'd rather have better conditions to play in."
•Twitter: @BruceMiles2112