COLUMN: The rain is my enemy…

Rain is my enemy.

Now that I‘ve become a sports editor, I suppose it’s sort of poetic. Many plans have been ruined by dagger-like raindrops, which always seem to fall with harrowing accuracy on days I have something on my calendar.

Theme park trips have been ruined by the mass shutdown of loop-de-loops amid flashes of lightning. Many picnics were spoiled by wet soil.

But most of all it’s been baseball prevented by precipitation. We get the term “raincheck” from the annals of baseball history, so it’s only fitting that my attempts to enjoy America’s pastime would so often fall victim.

Plenty of rain delays and even a few outright cancellations derailed would-be core childhood memories at Turner Field. Plenty of less nostalgic but still fond romps were aborted at Truist Park, the Atlanta Braves’ new-ish home.

So when the raindrops came down this past weekend in sporadic flashes, one moment falling lazily and the next pouring aggressively, it felt dreary. 

The wet pelted the last of the Cherry Blossom Festival’s events, sending booths and their owners scurrying from the Food Truck Frenzy and nearby Mulberry Street Arts and Crafts Festival. The festival was all but empty by 2 p.m.

The blossoms swirled in puddles as my girlfriend and I ate crepes with balsamic glaze and raspberry jam in the humid Sunday air. Luckily we were not outside for the worst of it — that hit during dinner that night, a sudden sheet of rain so fine and fast it almost looked like fog somehow — but we did get a little dank, our hot pink outfits sprinkled on enough to take on an ever-so-slightly darkened hue.

It was yet another example of an event of mine getting, quite literally, dampened.

Except this time it felt a little different. It seemed, almost, like more fun with the rain along for the ride.

It helped that the overcast skies worried folks enough to thin out the typically clustered crowds at the festival, but there was something about a light misting that made for a pleasant atmosphere.

The rain is usually the enemy. But if the precipitation is light enough — think of a drizzle instead of a torrential downpour — it can unexpectedly be a godsend.

To begin Macon’s high school football season in 2024, several Bibb County schools played in a two-day, packed-to-the-gills kickoff classic at Fort Valley State University in August.

The event’s first day was a typical late summer afternoon in Middle Georgia: sweltering, sweaty and soupy. The games slotted at noon and mid-afternoon happened under a boiling summer sun, while the night game was a bit more tolerable.

The second day was not as straightforward. A summer storm rolled into Peach County, delaying the Westside vs. Howard showdown by a grand total of four hours — ‘grand total’ is key here, as the game kicked off after about a two-and-a-half hour delay, then was shut down again right as the first quarter ended when more lightning flashed in the distance.

It was a bit grueling, of course, but more nerve wracking than anything because it was one of my first handful of actual games as the sports editor of The Melody.

At the same time, though, sharing that exhausting wait with some fellow journalists was a bit of fun. And the game proved worth it in the end — Kadiphius Iverson, one of Bibb County’s most entertaining football players last year, scored a walk-off overtime touchdown to give Westside the rivalry win.

Even after a lightning delay that felt as if it took eons, penning a recap of such a game made it well worth it.

One other key rain delay memory passed through my head as the showers fell on downtown Macon earlier this week.

I was at Fenway Park — a dream location for any baseball fan, one brimming with history in every old nook and cranny — with my family a couple years ago to catch a Braves game against the Red Sox.

It seemed that rain would, in perhaps the most painful way yet, foil my plans yet again. We only had one chance to see Atlanta play, and the precipitation had been coming down in a moderate but steady drizzle all day. The dreaded tarp was shielding the dirt on the field from moisture, but game time came and went with no first pitch.

As my siblings and father ventured into Fenway’s narrow, aged confines in search of franks and pale ales, my mom and I sat wedged into the ballpark’s cramped seats, frantically refreshing any and all news sources in search of some reassurance that the game would go on.

At last, we spotted the Fenway grounds crew slowly slinking back onto the diamond to begin the process of rolling up the tarp and getting the field ready for the first pitch.

I don’t think I’ve ever been so thrilled to see 20 men in ponchos, nor will I ever be so elated again at such a sight. My mom and I went nuts, simply put.

Of course, Atlanta would get properly blown out in that game — though we did get to see the Braves turn a triple play, which was impressive — but that wait for the first pitch will always be a treasured memory.

So yes, the rain is my enemy, especially as it relates to my job as The Melody’s sports editor. Nothing irks me more than a potential story getting washed away by the weather. 

But in the words of Kerrell Goolsby, who often sends scores and statistics for Howard baseball, sometimes “mother nature pitches a no-hitter.”

It’s the times when baseball gets up off the deck in the ninth inning against mother nature that mean the most — the occasions when just when you think the infield has turned completely to mud, the game goes on.