07/05/26 12:59:00
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07/05 00:57 CDT Cubs fans sing `Take Me Home, Country Roads' during fog delay
at Wrigley Field
Cubs fans sing `Take Me Home, Country Roads' during fog delay at Wrigley Field
By MATT CARLSON
Associated Press
CHICAGO (AP) --- Add the St. Louis Cardinals' 3-0 victory over the Chicago Cubs
on Saturday night to the list of classically weird happenings at Wrigley Field.
The game at the iconic North Side ballpark was delayed by fog for 15 minutes
after the sixth inning. The Cardinals led 2-0 when play was stopped, then went
on to win their third straight.
The crowd of 38,872 joined in singing John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country
Roads" as the delay began. The early 1970s hit song has re-emerged during the
World Cup soccer tournament, with U.S. players joining tens of thousands of
fans in singing it at the end of matches.
The rare Saturday night game at Wrigley started an hour late due to rain, then
fog billowed in from the north starting in the second inning and got denser.
The visibility became so poor that players said they would lose sight of the
ball. They struggled and called out tracking fly balls, but there were no
misplays.
"Yeah, that was brutal," Cubs All-Star center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong said.
"I've never seen anything like that so, I'll just leave it at that. It was
reminiscent of when like I was kid playing rec ball, soccer and stuff like
that. Yes, you could see the ball hitting the bat, then not so much."
Crow-Armstrong, a Gold Glove winner last season, somehow caught Masyn Winn's
deep fly for the second out of the sixth. He drifted to the edge of the warning
track, then dropped to one knee to do it.
"I don't know how he saw my ball, to be honest with you," Winn said. "When the
ball was getting above the lights, I just thought it disappeared. I was crazy
to me."
Winn, the Cardinals shortstop, said he had a tough time seeing on the field.
"Right when they hit it, you could see kind of the direction of where the ball
was going" Winn said. "And you know, as soon as it touched, like light level,
it was gone. It was weird.
"At first I was like, ?Oh this is pretty damn cool.' It felt like this was a
sick game to play on July 4. But by the end of it, I was, like, ?This is
crazy.' Nobody could see anything."
Winn said Cardinals left fielder Lars Nootbar told him he couldn't see the
hitters. Nootbar went on to catch Dansby Swanson's drive against the wall for
the final out of the seventh after the fog subsided.
Nootbar said he thought Swanson's ball was headed to the stands for a two-run
homer, but the wind that had pushed the fog into the ballpark kept Swanson's
fly inside as well.
"I'm glad they didn't put more balls in the air, because we probably would have
been in some trouble," Winn said.
The umpires conferred with St. Louis manager Oliver Marmol and Chicago's Craig
Counsell after the sixth. Then the delay was announced on video boards as the
result of "weather in the area."
Marmol said it was the right call.
"There was a point there where no one on the field could see where the ball in
play was," Marmol said. "Thankfully we got a groundball to short with some
punch-outs involved, because it would have been very circus-like otherwise.
"So good job pausing the game, letting (the fog) go through and then
continuing, because that was different."
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AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb
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