Baseball's Soggy Spring

Rick Dempsey entertains fans during a rain delay.

Baseball has endured a spring of rainouts. There were four more today and the number of games postponed has already eclipsed the total for 2010. For fans that miss out on games it's disappointing. For teams, it's at least inconvenient for the players and also could mean lost revenue for the front office.

Rainouts became more of a problem for baseball when teams started to sell a large percentage of the tickets available for each game. If fans wanted to use their rain checks at another game, there weren't enough seats available. More teams started playing split-admission doubleheaders. That puts pressure on pitching staffs. In the days when playing two on Sunday was common, starters went deeper into games and bullpens were not chewed up as quickly.