The incessant rain was as welcome as the Red Sox at Yankee Stadium on Thursday. But the rain, which varied between being a deluge, a downpour and a drizzle, bombarded the Bronx for hour after soggy hour. A day at the ballpark became a night at the ballpark.


As the rain kept falling and the skies switched through endless shades of gray, the Yankees and the Washington Nationals waited. And waited and waited. So did some of the fans who had the misfortune of buying tickets to a game that was being held captive by the miserable weather.

After a 5-hour-26-minute delay, Joba Chamberlain finally uncorked the first pitch of an already draining day at 6:31 p.m. Once the game began, it was cozy at the usually crammed Stadium. Anyone with advice merely had to scream at the players. A few Yankees admitted they could hear what some of about 10,000 fans yelled to them in this intimate setting.

The Yankees could have used some hitting advice in a disheartening 3-0 loss. Craig Stammen pitched six and one-third innings for his first major league win and made sure the Yankees continued an aggravating trend. In four of the last five games, the Yankees have been flummoxed by a pitcher they had never faced.

“The disappointment is the loss, not having to wait around,” Manager Joe Girardi said.

In the first inning, the Yankees thanked fans for being patient and invited them to relocate to any seats in the main and field levels. The fans scurried to get those seats, with some climbing over railings. The nine rows of premium seats, which include the much-scrutinized $2,500 seats, were off limits.

An inning away from being shut out by the worst team in the major leagues, the Yankees announced that tickets from Thursday’s game could be redeemed for free bleacher, grandstand or terrace tickets to nonpremium games for the rest of this season or 2010. Fans also have the option of redeeming their tickets for half-price tickets to nonsuite seats in 2009 or 2010.

Maybe the tickets will allow the fans who stayed, left or never bothered to come to the game to forget about a challenging day that ended with a dreary loss. Chamberlain compared the modest crowd to pitching at Class A. To Johnny Damon, the atmosphere was “definitely strange.”

“I think it probably seemed like 30,000 empty seats,” he said. “Thirty thousand smart people who didn’t want to weather the delay and wanted to watch it on TV.”

The Yankees have had three rainouts this season and two of those will be made up in September, so they wanted to avoid another washout. Since this was an interleague game and the Yankees do not play the Nationals again, there was more of an urgency to play.

In addition to the difficulty of rescheduling, the Yankees surely wanted to oppose a team that is now 18-46. If the Yankees needed to wait several hours for the chance to grab a potential win, they were willing to wait. That strategy fizzled. The Yankees were meek on offense and did not have a runner reach third base until the seventh. Chamberlain was smudged for three runs in six innings.

Another reason for the wait could be traced to the Yankees having sold 45,143 tickets. If the game was postponed and rescheduled, there is a chance, however slight, that it might not have been made up. If that happened, the Yankees would have had to provide ticket refunds. Instead, the game was played at a mostly empty stadium.

“It’s kind of a weird thing,” Derek Jeter said. “It doesn’t happen that often, especially here.”

While the fans were mostly polite during the delay, some became agitated in the late innings in a stale game. Still, others were giddy. The chant that reverberated in the ninth was for Michael Kay, the YES Network broadcaster, who waved from the television booth.

Mark Peters, who lives in the Bronx, played it smart. He avoided the rain by waiting until just before the first pitch to stroll into the Stadium. Peters did not leave his house until the Yankees announced that the game would start at 4 p.m. After that potential start time passed, Peters still stayed dry.

“I just waited in the diner for the last two hours,” he said.

Peters, who did not have a drop of rain on his Yankees jacket, smiled and said, “Sit anywhere, right?” As it turned out, the joking line was accurate. The Yankees let fans move to choicer seats and will let them have another ticket, too. It was a token gesture after a day game turned into a night game.


INSIDE PITCH

The Yankees will be among a handful of teams scouting Pedro Martinez’s workout in the Dominican Republic on Friday. Since the Yankees had personnel working on another matter in the Dominican, they are curious enough to attend Martinez’s session. ... Brett Gardner crashed into the center-field fence to make a terrific catch in the eighth and left the game. Gardner said he had “a little headache,” but he did not get a CT scan. “I’m sure if they thought I needed one, I’d be there already,” Gardner said. ... Derek Jeter, who has a sore left ankle, did not start for the second consecutive game. He grounded out with the bases loaded as a pinch-hitter in the seventh. ... As expected, Chien-Ming Wang will remain in the rotation and make his next start against the Braves on Tuesday. ... Thursday was the first game this season in which a homer was not hit at the Stadium.


source : http://www.nytimes.com