ATLANTA — The waiting was the hardest part – and the longest.
Shohei Ohtani and Freddie Freeman each had three hits, including a home run, as the Dodgers waited out a thunderstorm to extend their winning streak to seven games with a 10-3 victory over the Atlanta Braves in a soggy game that took three hours to start – and two days to finish.
The scheduled start time arrived with a dry field, the tarp rolled up and put away. No rain was falling. Blooper was hosting a closest-to-the-pin contest in right field for a $100 gift card and a children’s choir had sung the National Anthem.
And then everyone sat and waited.
It was at least 30 minutes before the prophesied thunderstorm arrived. But when it did, it stuck around for over two hours, complete with lightning flashes and rumbling thunder.
The game didn’t start until 10:21 p.m. ET, Fox’s national broadcast managing to follow the late evening news on the East Coast.
“I’ve been a part of some crazy rain delays,” Freeman said, recalling a three-hour delay in Washington with the Braves when it never rained. “But yeah, I understand. I think they’re in 17 in a row. It’s crazy. We’re in 10 in a row. So when we got to about 8:30, I kind of figured we were gonna be playing this game. Which is okay. We’re here, we might as well play it.”
Both teams had been warned to “hunker down” and expect a late night. So no players were seen on the field or in the dugout as the scheduled start time approached and passed. Both starting pitchers delayed their preparations in lockstep with the storm.
“I decided to eat a little bit, relax a little bit,” Dodgers starting pitcher Roki Sasaki said through his interpreter. “But most importantly I got a lot of the routine that I wanted to finish out of the way because I’ve heard that when the game will start, it’s going to happen suddenly. I was ready for that.”
After three hours of watching NBA or NHL playoff action in the clubhouse, playing…
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