So the Yanks and Orioles are playing one of these double-admission day/night doubleheaders at yankee Stadium today. Game 1 was scheduled to begin around 1; game 2 in the evening. This is not rare these days–a lot of teams do the day/night DH when a game is postponed, there being so few off days during the season and owners being reluctant to give up a home date–but this particular one got me thinking.
Afte game 1 ends, you have to clear the stadium before Game 2 begins. You have to have the folks with tickets for game 1 (but not game 2) clear out of the parking lots/board the trains for home. You have to have the folks with tickets for game 2 (but not game 1) arrive and get them into the stadium in a timely fashion. This is all very well if the first game is a reasonable length. A 3-hour game gives you almost 3 hours between last pitch and first pitch. But as the game goes longer, your window shrinks, and at some point–a 4.5 hour game?–the first game will still be going on as the paying customers begin to arrive for game 2.
I guess you can keep them outside the park, and there will certainly be some folks who leave game 1 early if it goes that long. But I wonder about parking lots and the like. What happens when you show up for game 2 and there’s nowhere to park because of all the game 1 fans with their cars still in the lot? And how long can you hold a crowd outside the gates–especially if the crowd winds up including, say, thirty thousand people who didn’t attend Game 1?
I think of this with regard to the Yankees mainly because they (and Boston) are known for playing Very Long Games: pitchers who work very slowly, lots of pitches taken. Seems like if the first game today went even 11 innings, let alone longer, they’d be bumping up against some major confusion.
Has this ever happened before, that game 1 of a day/night DH went so long that Game 2 customers began arriving? Anyone know?